The Cruel Tutelage of Wan Shi Tong
by The Turn
Summary: When Azula escapes from her mental prison, she seeks the knowledge spirit for training and sanctuary. But how can she acheive elevation when her new master seems to be trying his best to kill her? Revised. Part One of the Fire Lord Trilogy.
1. Chapter 1

_**The story depicted in this fanfiction has received a rating of M/X from the Fanfiction Ratings Advisory Board for the full-sensory experiences of:**_

_**Torture**_

_**Sexual Perversion**_

_**Extreme Graphic Violence**_

_**Adult Language**_

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* * *

**This is a story that will one day come true. Nothing can change that. **

**Since time began, there have been stories of powerful gods whose fondest wish is to become mortal. They strive and work and sometimes bleed to make that wish come true. Only the good at heart can join the denizens of mortal kind—and sometimes, in certain stories, the deity has its wish granted, and is given the flesh and blood of a human.**

**This is not that kind of story.**

**This is a story that takes place a very long time from now, in a place so different from this, that neither time nor measurement can truly describe the distance of separation. It begins during a time of peace and illumination, and will descend into a world constructed of humanity's greatest nightmares. It is a story of the evils produced by hatred, pain, and even love so strong that it cripples those who have it.**

**Most of all, it is the story of a young girl who turned away from her humanity and strove to become a goddess.**

**This is the tragedy of how that girl's fondest wish came true.**

* * *

Aang skidded to a stop at the double doors and took a deep breath. Sweat trickled down his scalp—Zuko's message had reached him during the morning romp in the bedroom with the missus, and the breakneck speed with which he'd flown over to the castle had given him little opportunity to calm down or cool off.

He pulled open one door, paused, surprised to find not Fire Lord Zuko, but wise and wrinkled Uncle Iroh sitting at the strategy table, a steaming cup in one hand.

"Aang," he smiled, rising. "You've grown so much!"

Aang gave up all manner of Avatar decorum—there was no one else around to see him, anyway—and jogged forward, embracing the old man in a tight hug. "Been too long, Uncle."

Iroh laughed and patted the young man's back. "Better not let Zuko hear you. I believe he's possessive of that title for me."

"Then the Fire Lord's gonna have to accept that you're like family to all of us. How's Toph?"

They both made their way back to the table, Aang noticing that there were only three chairs set out, the last and empty one reserved for the Fire Lord.

"She's incredible. Claiming more suitors every day, which, I have to admit, is very good for the shop's business. I just feel bad for the boys when they fight each other and find out the hard way that their lovely young waitress is also the Jade Dragon's keeper of the peace. She wanted me to ask you if you and Katara are expecting yet?"

"What? Why does she keep bringing that up?" Aang laughed, and color flooding to his cheeks. "No, nothing yet. But not for lack of trying, though. To tell you the truth, Katara's getting kind of worried that nothing's happened yet. In the Water Tribe, most firstborns arrive before the mother's twentieth winter."

Iroh closed his eyes and nodded serenely, humming the same wise tune that Aang had heard more and more over the years. "Do not concern yourself, my Avatar."

"Uncle, please—"

"If I can call the Fire Lord 'nephew' just to annoy him," Iroh said, eyes twinkling, "then I can surely use your title to remind you that you still have a position in this world. So I will offer you a word of wisdom that a man of your position should already know: a person cannot rush art, education, or miracles. You cannot make wheat grow faster, no matter how many seeds you sow, and you cannot hurry a child's birth if her soul isn't ready to inhabit the body." He patted Aang's shoulder. "Try as much as you like. And you'd better enjoy it while you can! Because one day you'll look back at this life and all you'll see is peace and quiet, and they will look so strange to you."

The double doors once again opened. "I'm afraid," Fire Lord Zuko said as he strode in, parchments gathered under one hand, "that the peace and quiet might be over for a while."

Aang and Iroh both stood, offering bows.

Zuko waved his hand. "Stop that, you two." He dropped the rolls of parchment onto the table, hugged his uncle and clapped his hand onto Aang's shoulder. "If I can't have friends and family members treat me like I'm one and the same, then there's something _really _wrong."

"It seems," Iroh said, a frown knitting his brows as he looked at from Zuko to the papers, "that something might already be so. Nephew, you look worried."

"I do?" Zuko found his elevated chair and fell into it, looking dangerously like he was about to fall asleep out of laziness. "Damn. And here I thought I was fooling everybody."

"Fooled _me_." Aang had to squint. There was nothing he could see, nothing he could put his finger on that made the Fire Lord look like he was stressed…but still, something in the man's presence made Aang's studious glances stick around. "Don't tell me _you're_ gonna have a kid?"

Zuko—almost—smiled at that. "No, Aang. Tell Katara I said hello, by the way. But I didn't call you both over here to discuss future family members. A major problem's come up concerning a member who's currently around." And, like a match suddenly being lit, Zuko's façade of being relaxed and calm dropped like a cut curtain, forming him into a young man with narrow eyes and a grimly set mouth. It had the odd effect of making him appear _younger_.

Then again, it was how he had looked during most of his youth.

He reached to the stack of parchment. There must have been twenty pages. "The top few pages are reports from Grey Rock."

"The medical institution?" Aang asked.

Iroh's eyes nodded. "Azula."

"Right." Zuko lifted out the top page. "Listen to this. _Subject has shown conclusive evidence of complete mental breakdown. Symptoms range from the commonplace—incessant crying, talking to oneself, refusal to acknowledge others—to the violent. Background information reveals that subject is considered an extremely capable bender and former military (leading to culmination of compounding stress?). As required she will be kept immobilized for the continuation of her duration."_

Zuko put the paper down. "Immobilized," he clarified, "means that they bound her entire body so it could not move. In stone. They fed her through a tube."

The past tense verb was not lost on Aang. "Fed? Meaning, they aren't feeding her anymore?"

Iroh was silent. Zuko pulled another page; this one was a drawing. Aang noticed that many of the remaining pages had scribbling of charcoal on the edge of their borders.

"This is what Azula looked like on a daily basis. For three years." The drawing showed a coffin-type encasement made of stones with an opening in the top large enough to frame a foaming-at-the-mouth, wide eyed girl with black tangles of hair—the construction of Earthbenders reduced to macabre horror.

Aang felt a pang in his heart. This reminded him of when King Bumi had been captured. The Fire Nation guards had imprisoned him in a box of iron, unable to move his body. They had forgotten to immobilize his head, though, which was just enough for the crafty old man to move around and bend. Judging by the dimensions of the stone coffin and the size of the inmate's eyes, Azula was reaping the benefits of learning from past mistakes.

"How was she supposed to be treated in that?" he asked. "I thought she was there for rehabilitation?"

"_The moment the subject has any room to maneuver,"_ Zuko read, _"she immediately becomes prone to self-mutilatory tendencies. Oddly, she has yet to attack anyone but herself, and there have been no incidents showing the ability to bend flame."_ He let the paper drop. "That was three weeks into her treatment. They would talk to her through the window, let her out to walk around and such. The moment she was done stretching she would start clawing at her face and wrists."

Another drawing showed an all too familiar face glaring out of her coffin window, fingernail trenches descending from both eyes like tear paths. The eyes themselves looked agonized, pained. Accusatory.

"Who drew these?" Aang asked. "Was it a guard?"

"No." Iroh answered. "Ty Lee."

"I thought she was on Kyoshi Island."

"She is," he nodded. "Grey Rock is close by to her new home. She goes to visit every chance she has, and I go with her." He sat back in his chair, letting out a pained sigh. "Not always, though. Not as often as I should."

Aang had nothing to say. He hadn't visited more than once. That had been to oversee her transportation to the mental facility. Three years ago.

"That's not why we're here," Zuko said. "Aang, I'm here to warn you."

That made him blink. "What? About what?"

"About Azula." He spilled the papers out of their orderly stack and reached for the bottom, pulling out a landscape drawing of a building in smoking ruins. "She's escaped."

Uncles teacup shattered when it hit the floor.

Nobody paid it a single glance.

"Escaped?"

Zuko nodded, his jaw clenched.

"How? How could she just _escape_?" The words were coming too fast for him to keep a calm head, and his breathing accelerated into short, shallow sips of air. "I saw the guards. There were hundreds. She's on an island with no vessel traffic. And…for crying out loud, Zuko, _she couldn't move_!" He could have been pulling out his hair if he'd had any.

"Apparently she found a way." Zuko's voice was tight, anger coloring the inflection. "Nobody left alive saw how she did it. Nobody had ever seen her Firebend before. They got too comfortable with her."

"They paid for it. Now it's our turn." Cripes, he had to leave. He had to go home. Oh, _Katara_, she'd be the first one Azula would go to for revenge—Aang turned from the table and headed for the doors. He should've brought his glider staff in with him, there was a window in the hallway—

Iroh stood up. "We have plenty of time."

That stopped Aang in his tracks. When Uncle said something with confidence, it was practically written in stone. "What do you mean?"

"Lord Zuko," he said slowly, "you have already sent messages to the others of the group, I take it?"

Zuko nodded. "Messenger doves. Ten per person, just in case, and I sent them out as soon as I received word from Grey Rock. Suki and Sokka should be getting theirs by now. Ty Lee and Mai already know."

"Toph can't read," Aang pointed out. "And Uncle's right here."

"There's plenty of people at the Dragon who can read the notes for her," Iroh said, his voice worried but calm. He was a general again, receiving news of an spy amongst his soldiers. "If anyone tries to lie to her and say it's a love note, she'll be able to tell. And I'm heading back there as soon as possible, anyway. But that is not my point. Aang, please sit." And he took his own advice.

Aang had to physically restrain himself from opening the door anyway and flying home immediately to keep Katara safe, but he managed to make it back to his chair. "How much time do we have?"

"I am not certain," Iroh answered. "But we can assume that Azula is still very smart. She had to be, in order to break out. Grey Rock is a mental facility, yes, but it is also a maximum security prison that rivals Boiling Rock—and let's not forget that prison breaks seem to be a specialty in this family."

Zuko didn't find it funny. "I'm doubling Father's guard anyway."

"Your father is one thing. Azula is another. She will not attack so soon, and especially not mindlessly. She has powerful physical skills, yes, but she is more of a mental fighter than anything. She will not attack unless she knows she can win. And all of the obvious facts point out that at this point in the game, she can't."

"What _obvious facts?_"

"She does not know her enemy anymore," Iroh said with finality. "It has been years since she last saw either of you. Every time Ty Lee and I visited her, we were given strict instructions from the staff not to reveal any news of the outside world. If Azula is still as smart as she once was—and I believe she has to be, in order to successfully escape—then she will need time to prepare and gather information."

The Fire Lord understood. "Which buys us time to ready some defenses."

"And hunt for her, too," Aang added. "We don't have just the Fire Nation to do it this time. We can get the whole world to keep on the lookout for any sightings of her."

"Yes." Iroh did not look happy, but the way he nodded and smiled fit his title of Dragon. "We hold much of the advantage here. Do not sink into despair, and do not let darkness cloud your judgment."

Zuko stood up and turned to a map of the world. Aang stood next to him. "I'll alert the castle staff," he said. "There's a military meeting after this one—Uncle, I'll need you here for that one as well—and I'll mobilize as many search parties as we can form. Mai is already wearing her old blade kit, and we should take her example and start putting weapons on anyone we care about."

"Suki and Sokka probably never take their weapons off, so they're already covered," Aang said. "I'll get Appa and fly to the North Pole. I doubt a messenger bird can make that flight any faster than we can. Then I'll see if Katara feels like moving in with her own people again." He doubted that she would, but still, he had to try.

"We need to spread the word as fast as humanly possible," Zuko continued. "Wanted posters. News flyers in Ba Sing Se. And we especially need to recruit some bounty hunters."

* * *

In the far corner of the world, a girl dressed in a filthy traveler's robe knelt in the grass outside a village perimeter. Facing away from civilization and into the forest beyond. Her knees were doubled beneath her, her head lowered as if in prayer. No one from the village could see her—they were insignificant, their village useless to her, and she had taken pains to make certain that she draw no undue attention.

So she simply kneeled. Thinking. Not of the wealth of food that lay inside each hut that could fill her empty belly, nor of gigantic reward that would undoubtedly be in place by now for her capture. She was contemplating the universe.

More specifically, how to escape the one she was in now.

This was not as impossible as it first sounded. Many people during the past had already done this. The Avatar, of course, but he barely counted—the Avatar was _made_ of the universe. But her uncle had done it once. And, after reading and re-reading a certain chapter of _Avatar: The Last Airbender_, apparently very common folk had done so as well.

In the beginning chapters of that book, the Avatar described his first trip into the Spirit World. It had been to save the life of a friend who had been kidnapped by some otherworldly beast. Said beast had been destroying the lives of a nearby village—the same village that the girl now knelt outside of—and whisking people away into the night. And beyond.

Somehow, she had to find a way to follow that path.

She had been kneeling in the grass for a very long time. So long that, had she been an ordinary eighteen year old, she would have fainted from exhaustion and lack of blood circulating through her lower half. This girl was far from ordinary. And she was prepared to stay there until death.

She spent her time in a state of extraordinarily focused concentration, applying the vast resources of her mind to solving the problem. Females are uniquely intelligent creatures—even ordinary ones—and their minds, when properly focused, are capable of solving many riddles.

Guessing the answer would not do. She had to be certain. Her knowing had to be born of deduction and elimination, not feelings or instincts. She had to be certain.

And when she had kneeled there in the grass outside the village walls long enough to do all those things, so long that night had come and dew coated her form, the answer was obvious. She lifted her head up and looked at the moon. "Is that all?" she asked. "It was just that simple for them?"

The moon did not seem to reply.

She sighed aloud, "All right then," speaking with the unselfconsciousness of a girl who had become used to solitude. Her deductive reasoning had eliminated all of the impossibles. Her one remaining answer was highly unlikely, but it was the only one that also made sense. There was only one way to know for certain.

She began to walk.

It was strange, she thought for a second, that a girl like her would literally be following the footsteps of the Avatar. As she walked she kept her mind clear, ignoring the stab of cold from the dew-soaked forest floor, pushing the welling hope down into the back of her mind with practiced determination. When she came to a clearing, she stopped.

There was the rock he had sat on in meditation. Smooth, ready for sitting, like a throne. She did not take one step forward.

Instead she experimented, and acted. She made a fist with her right hand, flexed the fingers outward, then extended her arm as if reaching for something invisible before her. Like dipping through the surface boundary of reflective water, her fingers began to disappear, wiping themselves from existence, followed by her hand—and she smiled, for there was indeed a surface here, but it wasn't water.

It was the surface of the Spirit World.

"So far so good," she muttered. Then she closed her eyes to focus every scrap of attention on her hand that was now in another dimension. She could still feel it as her own appendage, like it was perfectly normal. Until she brought power out from her furnace heart and channeled it down her arm, making her hand burst into flame that she could not see past the wrist.

What she did with that invisible, flame-coated hand was simple: she shot an invisible ball of fire into the invisible sky. A different sky that she had never seen before. When that was complete, she pulled her hand back into the universe she inhabited, and she sat down on the grass to wait.

This time, there was no need to wait for hours. Her experiment was soon rewarded with the sound of the universe being torn in half.

She did not even bother lifting her head as enormous black talons sliced into the world from beyond, ripping a hole in reality, pulling the surface apart in a gruesome parody of birth. Shortly, the rip was large enough that a white-feathered shoulder appeared, bringing with it a vast grey wing, and finally an owl the size of a mighty oak forced itself into the world.

The owl, whose name was Wan Shi Tong, knew how to make an entrance.

The girl bowed her head, still on bended knee. "I'm glad you saw my signal."

The owl's eye glittered in the moonlight. "There was no need for such a display," he said slowly. "I live in a library. I have read the Avatar's book. And I knew that he made a mistake when he didn't kill you. So it was quite obvious that you would escape someday, and come here." His black eyes glittered, and he lowered his head closer to the girl. "I'll ask that you do not set fire to my world the next time you require my attention."

The girl asked, "You knew I would come _here_?"

"Yes. Just as I know why." One taloned forelimb slammed the girl onto her back, pinning her to the ground. "So tell me. Why would I ever agree to let you into my Library?"

"That's not what I request." The girl did not show the slightest fear. "Let me into the Library or don't. I don't seek anything that I would use on my fellow man."

"The Avatar was not the only one to write of the War's end." The pressure did not decrease. "You have read your brother's book, I assume? Do you remember the one particular phrase he repeats most?"

She closed her eyes and sighed. "Azula always lies."

"So what makes you think that I would believe you?"

"Because you're smart enough to know when I'm lying." Her eyes flew open and narrowed. "I told you already. I'm _done _with this world. Am I lying?"

"That," he said slowly, "is something you should answer to yourself." He leaned off of her and allowed the girl to sit upright. "If you don't seek the knowledge necessary to regain your throne," he thought aloud, "then you only have one other reason to seek me out personally."

"My father."

This caused the owl's head to cock quizzically. "You wish to rescue him?"

"Yes. Then to find sanctuary for the two of us inside the Spirit World."

"I do not allow tyrants nor children inside of my Library, little one. You and your foolish guardian qualify as both."

"Is there a place you could simply hide us?" she asked.

"There are untold quadrillions of places inside the Spirit World in which a soul can take refuge. Not even I have knowledge of its entire landscape. But I am not a spirit of benevolence. To receive my help, you must earn it."

"How?"

He lowered his head down until both gigantic eyes peered at her from face level. "You say that with the desperation in your voice of a person who would do anything. Do you really believe that you can accomplish any task I lay before you?"

"I do."

"Then, if you truly wish to accomplish all your goals with my help, you must first become my apprentice."

This option confused the girl. "Your apprentice?"

"You must serve, instead of rule. You must accept, instead of fight. To serve me as an apprentice, you will gain all that you need to help your father." He raised his body upward until he was once more a majestic avian predator, staring down at a field mouse. "And you will most likely die before the end. Like all the others before."

"Done." The girl did not blink. "I pledge myself to become your apprentice." She stood up and placed both hands on her hips. "Where do we begin?"

"You do not begin. I, however, have already begun."

Something in the owl's voice, that cool and all-knowing smugness, caused the girl to glance warily at him. "What have you _already_ done?"

"I lied," he said simply, before touching one claw to her forehead and tearing her mind to shreds.


	2. Chapter 2

**Child**

_**It can be said that life's most fundamental dynamic is the attempt to move from a lower form of experience and consciousness to a higher, deeper level of consciousness, from a diffuse identity to a more consolidated and structured identity. In order for that psychology to come into being, there needs to be a death.**_

Azula is surrounded by beautiful colors. She is alone. She is dying.

Fire red, the most beautiful color, her favorite color, is the color of the hot coals being shoved down her throat. Worse still are the white-hot ligaments of her shoulders being twisted and stretched to the snapping point. There is the blue electrical storm inside her brain that sends shocks to every nerve ending, and the purple throb of bones in her arms, legs, and hands being snapped, their ends grinding together. There is soft green here as well—bubbling, foaming acid that bathes her skin—and yellow is the color of the snake venom coursing through her bloodstream.

Surrounded by color, Azula finds that painful events have their own color as well: the loneliness of having a mother who hates you, friends who betrayed you, a father who sees you as one rank below him when all you ever wanted was to be his equal in every way. But the freshest pain is the most recent, and the most agonizing.

It is the color of Azula's new teacher, and the trap he has caught her in.

She cannot remember if she is in a training area, or some kind of temple, or on a ship heading out to sea, or in the Spirit World. She has a vague memory of a giant creature whose knowledge will grant her everything, but she cannot remember his name. She can't think if it is important to do so. All she knows are the colors.

In the back of her mind she is certain that she once lived outside the colors. She once felt pleasure, anger, devotion, pride, even love. But these are only memories, ghosts that hide behind this monster of torture that has swallowed her in one bite. She is beyond time—just because the pain had a beginning does not mean that it will have an end. Where Azula hangs, there is only agony, and hate.

Lovely hate.

Hate is the set of hands that massages her screaming muscles, the cool breath against her burning fever. It is the promise of the future. It surrounds her, fills her from the inside, accepts her pain and maintains her sanity. It whispers a reminder of the people that led her here. The Avatar. The Waterbender girl. Zuko. Little Zuko.

Fire Lord Zuko.

_No_, she thinks, and probably even says out loud. _No, he is not the Fire Lord. Agni Kai …he didn't beat me…_

But she cannot regain her crown, just as she cannot escape this trap, and so even the reminder that she must endure this to kill her brother has become a source of anguish. Agony.

Alone, in a rainbow hell, Azula is surrounded by color.

* * *

A claw was what began to leak reality back into her brain.

This claw did not belong to a friend, or human, or even a mortal—dark brown, hard, wickedly curved like a raptor's talon—but the touch was not menacing in any way. It caressed the side of her face the way a healer would apply a wet cloth to the forehead of someone wracked with fever. Pain slithered away from her, to the back of her mind, but it didn't leave entirely—she could feel it there. Waiting. She knew it would overtake her again—

"You are dying."

She opened her eyes.

The claw that pushed the colors away belonged to a strange creature, some strange avian blend of dragon and owl. Wan Shi Tong. He stood above her, looking down with wide, black eyes, one talon at the end of his clawed hand resting lightly on her cheek.

Azula laid face up on some kind of hard rocky ground, unable to move. Something that felt like glass-covered rope tied her neck down; it was just loose enough to allow her to breathe. The same bindings held her arms tight to her sides, her wrists bound together behind her back, both ankles crushed together, grinding bone on bone—

Yet the greatest pain came from looking up at Wan Shi Tong and remembering all the trials she'd overcome—escaping the mental ward island, living as a fugitive and starving for days on end, finding a way into the Spirit World and risking everything to find him, the source of unlimited knowledge—only to be tortured to death.

He withdrew his claw from her face and looked at it, the black talon shimmering with her sweat. "Among certain…_older_ cultures," he said casually, as if they were comrades having a polite conversation in a library, "when their young had to be killed, they would toss them into caves and block the entrance. Sometimes the children were drugged to make them go insane first. Other times they would be coated with sap and have entire ant colonies cover their bodies. Do you understand why?"

Azula understood nothing except how badly she hurt and how foolishly she'd been betrayed. _"I_—" Speaking tore apart her throat as if she were hacking up splinters of iron. She winced, shutting her eyes against the pain until the sparks behind her limbs faded, then gritted her teeth and tried again, softer. _"I thought...you wanted me as your apprentice."_

"Yes. You did." He cocked his head to the side. "Why?"

Azula couldn't find the words to answer. She'd lived her life accustomed to strange things, knew that there was a lot that she didn't understand and that weakness came from ignorance by choice. But Wan Shi Tong…the knowledge spirit was just so…

Strange.

Terrifying. Powerful. A shape shifter—his appearance was now partly avian, but mostly monstrous. Body muscular and long, wrapped in scales and feathers of white and earth brown, he'd kept his stern, black owl eyes and sharp beak. Azula was acutely aware that she'd never seen a spirit willingly choose such a fearsome form when talking to someone who wished to worship them.

How could she have ever miscalculated so badly?

How could she have been so wrong?

"But I—" she rasped. "You told me you would teach me."

"And I also mentioned that no children were allowed into my library."

"I'm not…a child..."

"Correct. Right now, you are nothing at all, and that is because you are _dying_."

"I thought we were on the same side—"

One white, feathery eyebrow raised. "There is no 'our side,' little tyrant. You think that because a mortal passes from her world and into mine, that gains her the right to enter my library, study under my tutelage? Perhaps I _tricked_ you here, perhaps I have my own motives that your feeble human intellect cannot comprehend. Or perhaps _you_ are my true interest: what better way to spend idle time than in punishing one of the worst human monsters in your history? Perhaps everything I have told the Avatar those years ago was to get you here, inside this cave."

Azula's head swam with his words. "Which is it?"

"Which do you think it was?"

"I don't know…how _can_ I?"

"Why ask me?"

Azula stiffened; she wasn't so broken that she didn't understand mockery. "Just…tell me. Why are you hurting me? What is the purpose of this?"

"Deep questions, little tyrant." One finger extended its claw, and Wan Shi Tong pressed its tip against the center of her forehead. "I suggest you try hard to figure them out. There isn't much time left for you."

At the moment of contact, the interior of Azula's head exploded. Inside the burst of colorful fire, he heard his voice, cold and precise as a doctor about to kill his patient. "I am your guide through the lands of the dead."

* * *

_Dear Aang and Katara,_

_This should be the last of the letters that I write from Kyoshi Island, I think; if we can make it to Ba Sing Se before the winter shuts down the paths, our next conversations should be inside our new home in the Middle Ring._

_As you might have guessed, the last couple days have been a bit hurried. I've managed to be more or less steadily working as a tactician, especially since Aang dropped Sokka off to help us out here on the island (the girls love having him here—especially the new recruits, you know how they are). Sokka has come up with a couple of ways to improve our defenses all over the island. He's really good at noticing things we haven't, even though we've lived here all our lives._

_I'm not happy about going into hiding. Yes, I know, "we're just MOVING, not hiding," I've been told that plenty of times. But sand doesn't turn to water even when you call it a lake. The only reason that I'm allowing this to happen is so that my sisters here don't rely so heavily on me (Meng is already growing into a fine warrior; bythe way, she says Hi, Aang.)_

_Just so that we're clear, Aang, I'm going to continue helping out in this manhunt for Azula. That's why Appa isn't a beast of burden right now, helping us move; you need him to patrol the skies for that witch. The relationship between her and I is already personal enough; there is no way I'm just going to sit back and wait for her to strike first. Katara understands. So please, keep me updated. And give us missions. Otherwise I'll use my feminine wiles on Sokka and we'll go do our own manhunt._

_I think that we should both be settled into our new home in time enough to attend the Fire Nation Midsummer Festival. In the meantime, good hunting. I love you both very much, and with the favor of the spirits I'll see you in a few days._

_Take care,_

_Suki._

She wiped off the wet ink from her brush and returned it to the pencase made from a bullseal's thighbone. The whistling, moaning cries of the wounded sailors had faded into silence, and she supposed that she really ought to be helping out with the grave digging. The other wounded sailor occasionally coughed and asked for water; he'd taken a pirate arrow just below the navel, and Sokka had figured that he might as well start digging now. Of course, he'd been too full of pride to have his girlfriend help—"There's only one shovel, anyway."—but Suki understood him well enough.

He felt guilty for not being skilled enough to save everyone.

Suki had never really felt that way, herself. Not when it came to ambushes and surprise attacks. She came from a race of warriors; everyone was raised knowing that there was a good chance they'd die tomorrow, or their friends would die today, and that no one could escape any battle without loss of some kind or another. Sokka was still too much of a Water Tribesman to understand.

She envied him. He still felt that saving everyone was a possibility.

These pirates had been Fire Nation renegades, probably themselves veterans of the War—and skilled fighters. They'd cut through the sailors with ease. All that had saved the ship was a desperate counter-board led by Sokka and Suki; with the sailors scrambling behind them, they had abandoned their wallowing trader ship, captured the pirate's longship with hard fighting, pulled away, and left the burning trader in the pirates' flame-consumed hands. They'd all escaped with little more than their lives and the clothes they wore.

Suki sighed and rolled up the papyrus scroll, returning it to the bone case until morning, when they could move farther inland and find a village with messenger pigeons. In her letters, she never wrote of the bad things, and especially not how Katara's fool brother seemed to love finding different ways to prove his manhood. Engaging six pirates at once, for recent example.

Damn. She loved that man.

_Especially_ when he proved his manhood.

But Katara would never hear that from her. With the girl's fixation on trying to have children (and at an age so young! What was she thinking?) there wasn't a chance that Suki would gamble any kind of undue stress on a girl that could become pregnant at any moment. She didn't think that Aang would allow it to happen—being Avatar and all, the guy must have had serious levels of self-control—but Sokka had been quick to dash that hypothesis away.

"At his age?" he had said, grinning. "The guy is pretty much a hybrid mix of a dragon and an archer. He may not last long, but he'll burn hotter than hell and it'll take no time for him to reload."

Apparently Sokka's only artistic talents came when he formed pictures with words.

The man in question came back to the small camp where Suki and the rest of the sailors had bedded down for the night. There would be little sleep for anyone, thanks to the sand fleas, but no one was complaining. They had their lives. They had tomorrow.

Suki moved to make space by the small fire, and he filled in the gap. He was covered with a sheen of fresh sweat, but that didn't bother her at all. What bothered her was how Sokka stayed tense, eyes narrowed as he looked at the rest of the dozen men crowded around the small fire.

"Are you okay?" she asked, worried.

"Pretty far from it." He jutted his chin out to where the captain sat, getting his attention. "I'd have given Pao a warrior's pyre, if we could risk the light."

"You've done enough," the captain said wearily, staring at Sokka through raw and bloody eyes.

Sokka murmered, "Not yet," and turned his back away from the firelight, snuggling in close to his girl. Suki closed her eyes and said, "They might not have to dig another grave. The captain thinks Wo Lai is going to live."

"He's the captain, of course he said that." Sokka's whisper was harsh, and angry. "He may breathe till morning—_may _—but he won't see another sunset. I can smell the stomach acid from here."

Suki knew that his nose was keen as a wolf's. There was no chance he was mistaken.

"But that's not what's troubling you. Is it?"

Sokka's jaw clenched. "The war's been over for years. But the fighting never stops. And it just got worse; do you know what he's going to have to do once he gets home?"

"I already asked him. He said he'll pay his men, find a new crew, and start all over."

"Start all over is another way of saying 'start pirating, just like the ones who did this.'"

"Sokka," she whispered. "Stop it. That won't happen. He's a good man."

"Unless he's hoarded up enough wealth to build a new ship, crew it, supply it, and buy a load of trade goods, his only resource is that long, low, sleek pirate ship that he now owns. The one that's useless out in rough water away from land." Sokka clenched his eyes shut and shook his head in frustration. "That man will never captain a trader again. Not unless he takes it by force."

Suki absorbed his words. Said nothing. Her father was an Earth Kingdom shipmaster, and her two brothers were captains themselves. Salt ran in the blood of her family's men—thus, she hated pirates more than just about anything else on land or sea. Her father owned a dock where he was waiting for her arrival near Ba Sing Se—unless pirates had hit certain ships and killed him.

She made a mental note that, in the morning, she would tell the captain to take up cabbage selling. The days were filled with less work, and the profits better than if she ever found him at sea in the future.

In her mind, she flashed a vivid glimpse of herself, in the springtime of her fourteenth year, as she stood on the cliff outcroppings of Kyoshi Island and watched her last of kin sail off into the horizon. She had dreamt of them returning one day, finding their skinny little girl grown into a confident, strong young woman—unlike her sister, who was older than she yet possessing all the maturity of a child's doll. She would become the ultimate role model for girls everywhere.

Now, here she was: on the banks of the earth Kingdom coastline without a coin in her pocket, an old powerful enemy on the loose, her skin burnt red by the sun and peeling, nearly as rough and calloused as the palms of her hands. She scraped those hands together, touched those palms to her lover's abdominals, and felt his own hands respond by gliding along the hard muscle of her thighs.

_Well,_ she thought. _At least I've still got my figure._

And, ignoring the startled, incredulous look from the grieving captain and his mates, Suki laughed out loud.

* * *

Seconds. Centuries. They all passed in oblivion.

Consciousness swam back into Azula's brain, and she opened her eyes to find herself still tied to the hard floor, the knowledge spirit looking down on her, his face still that of a triumphant schoolmaster after the paddling of a troublesome student. Nothing had changed.

_I've got to change it. I've got to get out of here._

She was surprised to find that she could not just think, but decide. She was not helpless. She was just trapped. Like being back on the island again—they'd tried to contain her, but their overconfidence had failed them while her desperation had shown her ways to grow. The firebending skills she'd discovered within herself were going to come in handy. She reached out with her mind, focusing on the feelings of generating a lightning storm from nothing—

"The dead do not try to escape their graves, do they?"

Suffering and exhaustion had bled away Azula's capacity for astonishment—she did not care how Wan Shi Tong knew what she was doing. She opened herself to her hatred, her fury of being tricked…and found above her a connection to the bending arts ten times more powerful than herself.

Wan Shi Tong shimmered with power.

Azula whispered, "You're an Energybender…" Everything had changed. Her body and mind were _empty_. "What…what have you_ done to me?"_

"A child has no business playing around with fire. Let _you_ bend it? The idea. Bending is much too dangerous for children. So I took the ability away from you."

The emptiness of losing her power filled her head. Only silence. Only void. There was _nothing_. All her training, all her talents, her gifts, meant nothing to her without the power to use them. "I don't—you—there's no way—" Furious tears gathered beneath her eyelashes, and when she clenched them shut they trailed down either side of her face and into her hair. "What the hell _are_ you?"

Eyes as black as a cloudy night sky did not blink. "I am Wan Shi Tong, he who knows ten thousand things," he said simply. "What are you?"

He waited, motionlessly patient, as though to confirm that she had no answer. "I'll send the ants in now. They enjoy bodies that continue to breathe." He then turned away and left without a backward glance, only a flippant wave of his hand.

Azula was once more swallowed by agony.


	3. Chapter 3

Azula floats in the colors, a horrible realization dawning after a lifetime of torture.

She has begun to see a method to her new teacher's madness.

He releases her from the colors once in a while, as if he understands her limits somehow; when one single minute longer can kill her, the colors ease back enough to let her slide back into reality—cold, dark, hard, welcome reality. When the pain has crackled on for so long that her overloaded brain and nerves have been scorched too numb to feel anymore, Wan Shi Tong lowers her away from agony and back to the cave floor—where she can receive something resembling rest. That is when the ants go to work on her.

She is not even sure if they really _are_ ants. Tiny, dirt-sized creatures swarm over her skin and stab with pincers made of white-hot needles. But they serve a purpose. Their pain is a price that she pays for their service: they tend wounds scraped and torn into her flesh by her bindings, while other creatures inject her with nutrients and enough water through their stingers to maintain her life.

Even without the ability to bend, her years of training give her ways to survive the pain. She can drive her mind through a meditative cycle that builds a wall of discipline between her consciousness and the colors. Though her body still suffers, she can hold her mind outside the wall of discipline.

Her discipline is limited; the wall never lasts forever.

And Wan Shi Tong is patient.

He erodes her mental walls like waves against a shoreline. She feels as if he is _eating_ her—as if the knowledge spirit eats her pain, but never so much that she can't recover to produce more in the near future. She is being farmed of emotion. Her existence has become a tidal rhythm of agony that comes in, reaches an excruciating crest, and then recedes enough to allow her to catch a gasp of breath—Wan Shi Tong is careful not to let her drown.

Sometimes, when she wakes up, he is standing above her. Sometimes he crouches at her side with the unblinking predatory patience of an owl waiting for a field mouse to scurry from its burrow. Often, he is mockingly kind to her, even tending to her raw flesh himself with a cool wet rag in a dragon's claws.

But mostly he stands back, watching her where she lies. Naked, blood seeping from wrists and ankles and neckline. More than naked: entirely hairless. The insects tending to her also pluck and devour her hairs. All of them: head, legs, arms, underarms, pubis, eyebrows, lashes.

Once she asked, in her thin, weakly croaking voice, "_How long…?"_

His response was a blank stare.

She tried again. "_How long…have I been here?"_

His head cocked to the side, and he blinked. "How long you have been here is as irrelevant as where you are. Time and place belong to the living, little tyrant. They have nothing to do with you."

Her questions are always met with answers like that. Eventually she stops asking. Questions require strength, and she has none to spare.

Her first actual clue to what Wan Shi Tong's purpose was came once when she was brought back from the colors, trembling with exhaustion. These periods of rest almost hurt as much: her body slowly but irrevocably began dragging itself back into shape, resocketing her joints and achingly releasing the overstretched tension in the muscles.

Without the constant agony of the colors, she could do nothing but think of her situation, how hopeless it was, how hopeless _she _was, how Zuko would keep the throne and her father would rot in jail until they were all dead—

More to distract her thoughts than for any desire for conversation, she had rolled her eyes over to Wan Shi Tong and asked, "Why are you doing this to me?"

"This?" The knowledge spirit gazed at her steadily. "What am I doing?"

"No—" She closed her eyes, organizing her thoughts, then opened them again. "The torture. Breaking me, punishing me, that makes…a kind of sense…I guess. But this…"

Her voice broke. She caught herself, and held her tongue until she could control it. Despair was weakness, and weakness was not permitted. "_Why_ are you torturing me?" she asked, clearly and simply. "You won't allow me to die. You don't seem to find it very entertaining. And you aren't even _asking_ me any…" Once again her voice cracked. This time she could not bear to finish.

"_Why_ is a question that leads to thousands of different answers," he said. "You should instead ask yourself this: _what_? You think this is torture, or a breaking of some kind. To you. But to me?" He canted his head once more. "Who knows? Maybe there is a different word?"

"Other than torture? You should try this yourself," she said, tears falling beside the lips of a rueful smile. "I wish you would."

"What makes you believe I haven't?"

She stared, not fully comprehending.

"Perhaps you aren't being tortured. Perhaps you are being educated."

Azula made a hacking sound, somewhere between a cough and a gasp. "Even in the Fire Nation," she laughed, "education doesn't hurt this much."

"No? Perhaps that is why your homeland, despite being vastly stronger, better equipped, and possessing the greatest strategic minds in the world, lost the Hundred Year War. Citizens of the Earth Kingdom were certainly taught well by the pain you gave them."

"Oh, yes. And what are you trying to teach me with the pain you're giving _me_?"

"Is it what the teacher teaches," he asked back, "or what the student learns that is most important?"

"What's the difference?"

"That, itself," he said while placing his claw back to her forehead, "is a question worth contemplating, isn't it?"

* * *

Fire Lord Zuko finished his workout with a series of spin kicks against the head-sized leather ball that danced and bobbed in front of him, swinging from the rooftop by a chain. Back-spins to both sides, hook kicks, side kicks, crescent kicks—he kicked and twisted until sweat sprayed out horizontally from his hair.

He shook his head and made a mental note to be cautious of his left leading foot; some change in the weather had stiffened the old sword cut on his right thigh, slowing him enough that he was only landing about three out of four back kicks on the target. That was a bad trend—he wasn't a kid anymore, and experience compensated for speed only up to a point.

He stopped, took three deep breaths, and went straight to a concealed door in the training room's wall. The underground gladiator fights would be starting in one hour.

It was time to let the Fire Lord sleep for a while.

He stepped inside and closed the door. Two lit candles provided all the illumination he needed; even if there wasn't any light, he knew that he could put on all of his gear blind.

The black leather boots were faded and worn—rawhide laces stretched and stiff, cloth soles imprinted perfectly with the shape of his feet. He placed them next to a folded pair of black, close-fitting peasant trousers that allowed him to move light and fast. Not always fast enough: there were slices and tears that were crudely sewn, the course brown thread showing like scars against the cloth. The folded tunic was next, followed by a pair of black gloves.

He stood naked in front of a full-length mirror. The flat muscles on his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, the bunched cords of his thighs and arms, all stood out like they'd been cut into stone. His skin was a swarthy map of crisscrossing scars on which could be traced the defining moments of his life. Here was the puckered circle of the Yu Yan archer's arrow he'd taken just after the coronation; here across his abdomen was the clawed scar of Jet's only successful blow. Up at his collarbone was the jagged splash of boiled skin where he'd intercepted Azula's lighting strike during the Agni Kai. There on his back were the razor lines of a devil panther given to him most recently in the gladiator pits.

He had a story for every scar. Now, in the mirror, he touched every one of them and let each story flood his mind, reminding himself once again that there was more to him than a Fire Lord.

_I am a Spirit._

He slipped on the cloth breeches, stepped into the boots, put on both gloves, and pulled the tunic over his head. A sheathe hung on the wall, holding the twin swords that he knew more intimately than he knew Mai. For a second he contemplated scrapping his plans and simply visiting his woman in bed—she loved the outfit to almost perverse levels—but instead he pushed those thoughts away and donned the sword onto his back.

The mask was all that was left.

A new one. He'd never been able to get the old mask back from the lake. But this one was identical, and served just as well.

Now he looked again at the mirror, and the image that returned his glare was the abyss-eyed, forever smiling, Blue Spirit.

_I am strong. I am fast. I am unstoppable._

The knots of worry that had tied themselves into his gut slowly uncoiled and fell away. He grunted a silent chuckle at the grim, cold freedom he now felt. Fire Lord Zuko's problems, his weaknesses and insecurities, his whole claustrophobic life, would be left behind here in the palace.

He let Azula's image boil to the surface of his consciousness. If she was dead, he would spend the rest of his life training and preparing for a war that would never come. If she was not, he would be ready for her.

_I am invincible. I am perfection's blade._

_I am the Spirit._

And he blew out the candles, stepped out of the hidden room, and made his way out of the palace with no one the wiser. Tonight's purse at the gladiator arena would be given away to those who needed it. And he would enjoy the exercise of winning.

Life was simple. Life was good.

* * *

"What is pain _for_? Do you ever wonder that, little tyrant?"

There was another time—before, after, it was hard to keep track—that she woke up to find Wan Shi Tong out of sight, hidden in the darkness, his voice prattling on and on.

"What is its function? Is it an energy of some kind that cannot be bent, only felt by the bender? For myself, I say that pain is a teacher—if going too close to a fire burns you, even a bug will stay far enough away to survive." He stepped out of the shadows, approaching her head and looking down. "To be 'beyond' pain is to be dead, isn't it?"

"I hope so," she answered dully, once her throat opened enough for her to speak. "I'll have something to look forward to."

"Indeed. Then again, the idea that the dead are beyond pain is only a matter of faith, isn't it? I should say, we _hope_ that the dead are beyond pain. But there is only one way to make sure. Do you think that pain may be the ruling principle of death as well?"

"I don't know what to think… I just want it to stop."

It broke through her then, the flood. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and cried. It wasn't painful. It felt good. She had a lot of despair pent up—and now she shaped it, showed it the way out, and made it into a whimpering cry that went on and on and on.

"Just kill me, please let me die…don't hurt me anymore…"

Almost immediately, Wan Shi Tong turned away from her. He was very quiet, and he brought his head down in a solemn hang. For a moment Azula wondered if her suffering might have finally touched him somehow. Wondered if he might take pity on her—

"I am such a fool."

When he turned back, the only emotion on his noble face was disgust. Eyes alight with mockery, not compassion. "All this time, I thought I was speaking to a child. A little _girl. _But self-deception is the most effective one of all, isn't it? I let myself believe you had once been on the path to maturity, when in truth you are only a hatchling, sniveling in its nest, squalling for a worm to be dropped into your mouth."

"_You—you—"_ Azula stammered. "How can you possibly—after what you've done here—"

"After what _I've_ done here? Oh, no no no, little infant. This is about what _you_ have done here."

"I haven't been doing_ anything!"_

Wan Shi Tong stepped one pace backwards. Slowly, he held both clawed hands upward, palms raised. After a long, long silence, during which_ anything!_ echoed in her mind until Azula's face burned with shame, Wan Shi Tong said one word:

"Exactly."

He knelt, leaning close to her ear. "Is that not the tactic of an infant? To cry, and scream, and wail for hours? Hoping someone will notice, and take its problems away?"

Azula's tears stopped their flow. "What _can_ I do?"

He sat back onto his heels. "Certainly, among your options is continuing to lay in this cave and suffer. And should you take that path, do you know what will happen?"

She gave him a battered eye. "What?"

"Nothing," he said simply. "Oh, eventually you'll go insane, I suppose. Again. Someday you might even die." He lowered his voice. "_Of_ _old age_."

Azula couldn't breathe. She couldn't take another _minute_. He was talking about years. Decades.

The rest of her life.

Azula remembered the closest thing she'd ever had to friends in her old life—Ty Lee and Mai. They had eventually formed a small, elite sorority; where Azula led, they followed. They fought with her against anyone that stood in their way. As a unit they were nearly unstoppable.

She remembered how they betrayed her. Left her. Mai for what she thought was love, and Ty Lee…she still didn't know why. They wouldn't be coming to help her. Nobody would.

Because, to them, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation deserved to die.

"Is that why you keep me here?" she asked. "To gloat? To humiliate your defeated enemy?"

"Am I gloating? Are we enemies?" he asked, sounding puzzled and honest. "Are you defeated?"

"I…I just don't understand what you're trying to do to me."

"That, at least, is very clear," he sighed. "I am giving you _gifts_. One of which is freedom from the hope of rescue. Can you not see how I am trying to help you?"

"Help?" Azula stared, incredulous. "You need to focus on the language we're both speaking, Wan Shi Tong, because when we talk about what you've done to me, _help_ isn't the word to use."

"No? Then perhaps you are correct—our differences may be entirely based on linguistics." He inhaled slowly, dropping down onto his haunches with a sigh. For an instant, Azula was reminded of a snow owl sitting in a tree for the night. "When I was very young—yes, I was once as young as you, little tyrant—I came upon a caterfly at the end stage of its metamorphosis, still within its cocoon. I already had some touch with the bending of energy, and I've always had a special bond with avian creatures, as this one was abouot to become. I could feel its pain, it's mind-numbing panic, it's claustrophobia. The little creature knew that it's struggle was hopeless, but still it fought on to escape. So I gave it what I think _you_ mean by _help_: I used a small blade to slice the cocoon open, to _help_ the caterfly escape."

He bowed his head. He sounded sad, like the memory was just as painful as the ants swarming over Azula's body. "Again, I was such a fool. I did not know that one can't help a caterfly by releasing it from its cocoon. It needs the effort, the struggle of escape, to force proper chemicals into its wings."

Azula did not say anything. She had a feeling she knew how the story was going to end.

"The caterfly was crippled by what I'd done. Never to fly, never to join its brethren among the outside world. During that long summer, I sometimes heard the mating song of the species through the window of my bedchamber, and from my caterfly I would feel only sadness and bitter envy. I cared for it as best I could—but the life of such a creature is short enough as it is. They spend years as larvae, storing strength for that one terrifying escape, so that they may have a single summer of dance and song. I _robbed _that caterfly of its life. I stole its destiny. Because I _helped _it_."_

"And you're still a fool," Azula muttered. "That's not what _help_ means, either."

"No? I saw a creature in agony, crying out in terror, and I undertook to ease its pain. If that is not what you mean by _help_, then my command of our shared language is worse than I believed."

"You didn't understand what you were doing."

"Neither did the caterfly."

"Bad luck, then."

"Tell me this, little tyrant. If I _had_ understood what was happening—if I had known what the larvae was, and what it must do, and why it must _suffer_ so, to become the beautiful creature that it could become—what should I have done that you would call, in your terms, help?"

Azula thought for a long time before answering. "The only thing you could have done was to keep it safe. Take the cocoon indoors, away from predators. Leave it alone to fight its own battles."

"And perhaps," Wan Shi Tong added gently, "also protect it from other well-intentioned beings who might, in their ignorance, try to _help_ by freeing it from the prison it was entrapped in."

"Yes," Azula said, then caught her breath, staring at wan Shi Tong as though he'd suddenly grown the head of an ox. "Hey…" Comprehension began to dawn. "Hey—"

"And also, perhaps, one might stop by every now and then, to let the struggling, desperate, suffering creature know that it is not alone. That someone cares. That its pain is in the service of its life and destiny."

Azula could barely breathe, but somehow she forced out a whispered, "Yes…"

"Then, little tyrant, our definitions of _help_ are identical."

Azula looked at his face, straining her neck against the rope that bound it. "We're not talking about caterfly larvae, are we?" she asked, her heart suddenly pounding. "You're talking about _me_."

He leaned close to her face, eyes piercing. "About you?"

"About _us_." Her throat clenched with impossible hope. "You and I."

He reached a hand forward, caressing her cheek. "You must go now. The colors are hungry for your return."

"No, _wait_—caterflies, tell me more a—!"

He touched her forehead, asked, "When you bent flame, why was your fire blue?" and blasted away everything she ever was.


	4. Chapter 4

Azula hangs in the colors, thinking.

For a long time, she is amazed that she actually can think. And not just form coherent thought—but think _clearly_. For indefinite days, or weeks, or months, the colors have been eating away at her sanity, taking her away from time and place and slamming her repeatedly into solid, continuous _NOW_,that for an agony filled eon she simply marvels at the beauty of the coherent thought process.

Then, she gets to work on his riddle.

_I think I get it,_ she thinks to herself. _Is this what he meant? Is the key to this prison really just answering why my fire is blue?_

Slowly, gently, she begins to pull an old memory out from the back of her mind. It is precious to her, possibly the most precious memory she has. When she was back in the world, when Fire Lord Ozai ruled the land, she would often take this memory out and relive it daily, sometimes even hourly.

It is the memory of the ritual that had given her fire the color of a winter sky. The memory of doing something that no one else had the strength to do. Most importantly: it is the memory of the first time she thought pain felt good.

* * *

Wan Shi Tong stood at the feet of the pitiful creature and felt a change cascade through her body.

_Impressive_, he thought.

The girl was catching on much quicker than the others.

* * *

Azula stepped up to the doorway and stood still for one long moment, making certain that no one was around. The energy of a sleeping castle filled the hallways. No footsteps, no scraping of shoe against stone, no breaths being held. No one to stop her.

She stepped up to the door. Behind that door was a room she had never been inside. She'd been forbidden. Only one man had access to the room, and he'd granted her access to it for this one lone night.

There was a knot in her stomach. Her legs felt…weak. Like after ten hours of form practice. She felt very hot in her face, and very cold in her hands. She caught a mental image of herself turning around, heading back into her bedchambers. If she did that, then she would know the most likely path her life would take. She would still grow up to become the greatest Firebender the world had ever seen.

But Father would never have been her teacher.

That decided it. She did not knock, but pulled the door open silently and slipped in.

Fire Lord Ozai waited for her.

He did not say anything about the unannounced entry. Instead, her father's eyes flashed, and there was the incremental curving of his lips that Azula knew meant that he was secretly very pleased. She stepped forward, silent, and knelt in front of him. Beneath the evening robe, her stomach tightened.

She tried to control it, relax, herself, but that proved impossible. She couldn't speak, either. All she could do was wait, the anticipation building, her mind churning with the certain knowledge that she was going to walk out of that room a changed person.

"Azula."

His voice made every muscle in her back tense, and the breath caught in her lungs.

"Lines are going to be crossed tonight. Lines that no one else would dare to look at. What we are about to do breaks laws, and customs, and moralities held by every civilization past and present. Once we begin, there is no way to stop."

She looked up at him, remaining on one knee. Not saying anything. Letting her eyes reveal exactly how she felt. The Fire Lord stared back. Eyes dark, black in the candlelight. He was the most powerful man on the planet. Unstoppable.

Azula sipped in a tiny breath. "The last thing I want to do is stop."

He smiled, and the enjoyment seemed to darken his face.

"Rise."

She stood up straight. Very slowly, he untied the sash around her waistline. The silk moaned a whisper as he drew it away. She did not move an inch, and kept her head raised high, eyes locked with his, lips parted to allow small shallow breaths. The robe cascaded into a silken lake at her feet, making her start again, rising up on the balls of her feet for just an instant. One inch closer to him.

He took both of her hands, and the skin contact made her go dizzy. She trembled. Nothing to do with the outside temperature—truthfully, Azula felt feverishly hot. She stayed silent.

Just like her, he did not say a word. But he was completely different: he was right at home in the silence that filled his daughter with tension.

The candlelight made the black in his eyes dance. He simply looked at her, straight on, no possibility of breaking eye contact. She remembered her last birthday, when she turned thirteen, where everyone said that she was growing into a beautiful young woman. She had thought that they were idiotic words, the kissing of her ass from servants and advisors, but now she saw just how wrong everyone was, because she felt like a speck of dust on the hide of a mouse, standing there in front of a golden-eyed god.

She wanted to kiss his cheek. But didn't even attempt to try.

She wanted him to kiss her. He wouldn't. He merely looked her in the eye with all the patience of a predator waiting in the treetops. Never speaking. She broke eye contact first—so painfully _beneath _him, it had always been like that—instead she focused on his hands. Her body was already snarling with hunger for their touch. But she said nothing.

_Just savor the moment._

It almost came as a shock, the realization. _I'm_ _savoring_ _this_. The anticipation. The waiting. The not knowing. This was the first time that she was living out her fantasies with him, but he was not the same man that she'd seen every day, he was something else. Something more powerful, more in control, more skilled than the Fire Lord that all knew. She had come here tonight expecting a powerful experience, not fully understanding just how powerful such an experience might be.

He used both hands and with feather-light control he steered her further into the bedroom. Her mouth was dry. He reached out one hand for the back of her neck. She thought, for a second, that he was going to pull her close, going to take her in his arms, but he didn't. He just threaded his fingers through the strands of hair at her nape.

Her heart was pounding. She sucked in air. Lowered both eyes. Listened to the silence. A heavy, penetrating, all-pervasive silence, the kind that made her feel like she was not only alone, but helpless against any threat.

And here she was. A virgin sacrifice at the mercy of a dragon.

He took a step back, removing his hand from her hair, and Azula had to choke back a protest_. I want him to touch me. I want him. I'm his. From now on, forever, I'm his and no one else's._ Her body screamed for the tips of those fingers that left fire wherever they trailed. She could even feel his eyes on her, focused between her thighs, cutting through her clothing like an incision.

She savored those burning eyes.

"Azula."

A jump.

The sound of his voice was like a lightning strike to her brain, and she was immediately alert and ready. Ready to do anything. He stared at her for a while, not at her eyes but _down there_, then at last he walked up to her and reached out a single hand. It stayed low, reaching underneath the hem of her nightgown and she felt him—blind and slow and accurate—touch the thin curls of teenage pubis over her swelling cunt.

His fingers were very, very precise.

"Pay attention."

His words turn into her air. She wanted him to kiss her so badly. She wanted his fingers on her skin, on her pussy, but they stayed just above it and it made her want to scream.

She looked at him.

"You're mine, Azula. You'll stay mine. And I want to be proud of you."

_I'll do anything to make you proud. Anything_.

The ghosts that were those fingertips slid downward. "What you experience with me tonight, you will never be able to experience from anyone else. No one. The line that you cross tonight will prove to me that you aren't like everyone else. And you will be worthy of my guidance."

Truer words had never been spoken.

"Tonight, you will want to scream. You may. No one can hear you through these walls."

Her voice was mute, yet that hadn't stopped her body language from crying out.

"You'll want to watch what I do. But you'll be blinded by tears."

She could barely hold them back.

"You'll want to please me. And the only way you can do that is to submit to my will."

"I will do _whatever_ you say."

A slight curve of the lips, and the Fire Lord raised one eyebrow. "Yes?"

"_Yes."_ With a boldness that surprised even herself, she unbuttoned the top clasp of her nightgown, allowing it to slide off of her body. The chill night air hardened her nipples into taunt nubs.

And the Fire Princess took one step forward, placed both hands onto the Fire Lord's chest, raised herself onto her tiptoes, and whispered softly into his ear, her voice shaking, and young, but certain.

"Do _anything _you want to me, Father."

* * *

The caterfly story may have been just that—a story, a way to manipulate her mind—but Azula can decipher the hidden meaning behind Wan Shi Tong's words until his lesson is revealed: Pain is vital.

The terror of being trapped in a cocoon, fighting for its life, was the only thing that could have given that caterfly its life in the first place. Those that don't fight hard enough to break free of the cocoon are not strong enough to live, and therefore die. Suffocating.

But that was not all that pain was, she realizes. Pain is also a survival mechanism: If going too close to a fire hurts, even a bug will stay away, and the moths that fly too close to the flame are burnt without mercy. Why? To further survival—and enhance education.

Because pain is also a teacher. How many times had she been burned in the past by her Firebending tutors? How many hours had she spent, lost in repetition after repetition of her form katas, punching the air and slicing with her legs, until her muscles quivered from exhaustion? True, her aim had been to deflect those embers shot at her, to build her strength and endurance for battle, so as to avoid the pain of losing in the future; but the best way to avoid pain would have been to forsake the training altogether.

Even father had said it, standing over her while she sweated, gritting her teeth: _If it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right._

Pain was also the missing link to gaining power and strength. For the past three years she had wondered how the Fire Nation—a land of soldiers, warriors, students of battle, worshipers of the warzone—could possibly lose a war against a nation of Earthbending hermits, a collection of old men, and a twelve-year-old boy, _in a single day. _She had wondered how she could lose a duel against her brother, the runaway outcast, while she had been at the height of her own power. And how, of all things, could a Waterbender girl outsmart her into being captured.

_Maybe_, she thinks, _it was because they all had suffered._

The biographic tales published after the War had gone into each of their troubles and strifes throughout their years. Zuko had been driven by near-mythological levels of mental agony, simply in order to regain his honor. The Waterbender girl had seen her mother killed by a Firebender, and had secretly—perhaps even without her own conscious knowledge—trained hard to master her element, in the hopes that one day she would find the raider who had taken her childhood away and make him pay.

And the Earthbenders? Wan Shi Tong had said it himself. They had suffered for a century. One hundred years. Those that hadn't been killed were able to crawl out of their war-cocoons, stronger and better than ever before.

They had all found power. All grown stronger. Smarter. Craftier. Better than they would have been, had they all stayed home and been in comfort. Because their homes had been taken away. By the Fire Nation.

_We_ _were our own downfall_, she realizes. _Because we made them hurt so bad with our fire, our technology, our weapons of war…and all we were doing was poking a sleeping dragon in the eye._

It all came back to the pain.

Pain was a teacher. And a bridge. And a source of power. It could be the power that breaks a person. Or it could be the power that made them unbreakable. It was all these things.

At once.

_It just depends on who you are. _

Azula, for the first time in her life, feels frightened by a discovery. She knows that Zuko had only become stronger because he accepted his pain as the price for strength. And the Avatar had known that his training would be bitter, but he did it anyway. Everyone that had ever done anything of meaning in the world—they all had to embrace the pain of their experiences. Because of who they were.

_But who am I?_ she wonders. _Am I made of the same quality they were_?

There is only one way to find out.

For incalculable eons, the colors have been something she has suffered through, fought against, tried to escape. She has been trying to find a way out of them.

Now, she accepts it as a price, and lets them spend her until there is nothing left.

* * *

Thousands of years passed before Azula could open her eyes.

She spent those thousands of years in one endless claustrophobic nightmare: she was held, bound, cocooned, unable to move, unable to scream. She couldn't see—her eyes wouldn't open. She couldn't breathe, because she had no lungs.

For a life age of the earth, she smothered.

Then, she felt a muscle twitch in the center of her back. It took a century, but she found that muscle, and made it contract. As decades grew into another century, shw found that she could work the other muscles in her back as well. Then she could clench her hips, her thighs, and bunch up the muscles in her upper arms—and the nightmare was now a dream, filled with possibility rather than dread.

And throughout the dream she knew that somehow, her chrysalis would crack open. And it did. And she crawled out of it, and she spread her new wings—such beautiful, beautiful wings—and she heard her voice sing out in laughter, a giggle that blossomed into the uncontrollable expression of _joy_ that she once had as a little girl. And she soared high and away, into the sky, never to be seen again by anyone…

When she finally opened her eyes, and realized that this had only been a dream, a tremendous wave of relief flooded through her. She thought, for a moment, that it _all_ had been a dream; the colors, the cave, Wan Shi Tong, the mental facility, Father…

Either it had all been a dream, or was still a dream, because she didn't hurt anymore.

It was pitch dark. She lay on something soft, padded, warm. Insanely comfortable. Like a palace couch that was covered in clouds. There was something pressing down on her body, and she realized that it was warm and comfortable too, and it covered her entirely, and it was somehow familiar…

_A blanket,_ she thought. _This is a blanket._

She moved her arm and sat up, and the blanket fell away, and for a moment she thought she was back in the colors: her joints screamed, and the world exploded into bright whiteness—but it was over as quickly as it had come, and she realized that the pain had come from a _healing_ body, not a tortured one, and the brightness came from the sunlight pouring in through a window and onto her prone form.

She held her eyes shut for a long time. Then cracked them open, and slowly, oh so slowly, the world came into focus around her.

She was in some kind of room. The walls and floor and ceiling, all of it, were made of stone. But not constructed by Earthbenders; there was none of the smooth lines and flat, flawless design that their kind were known for. These walls and floors were constructed by hand, gray rocks collected and mortared together.

Azula stood up. The joints in her hips and shoulders felt like they were packed with sand, and they screamed in protest once more—but this was only pain. It wasn't really that scary anymore, and she still had to find out where she was.

The bed that she lay on was really a mat of thick, heavy furs, dark black and deliciously warm. Against the far wall were a pile of rolled up furs just like the ones she lay on, stacked on a shelf in a neat, orderly line. There was one window, but it was too high up for her to see out of—all that was visible was an ocean-blue sky.

_Where in all fabled hells am I?_

The temperature was cool, approaching cold. There was no sound anywhere. She had to find out more.

There was an opening with no door, and Azula walked through it and out into a stone hallway. No one around. She followed the hallway until it came to an enormous, heavy wooden door. She pushed against it; there was a heavy grinding sound, a groan of hinges, and the door scraped open.

Inside was a huge, vaulted hall lit by torches set into iron brackets on the stone floor, forming halos of flickering firelight that didn't quite penetrate the shadows in the corners. There were thick supporting stone pillars every few yards.

Behind her, the door creaked and thudded shut.

She squinted, again adjusting her eyes, this time to the semi-darkness. At the far end of the room, at least the length of a Fire Nation battleship, there was a raised platform. Standing atop it was Wan Shi Tong.

Despite the warmth of the torches, Azula felt the air around her dip toward freezing. For a long time, both stood staring at each other. She knew that she was just as lost, just as helpless as she had been in that cave, and he was in total control. But a lack of control had never meant she couldn't fight to get it back.

"Because I willingly had sex with my father," she stated.

Wan Shi Tong said nothing. He only cocked his head to one side, quizzically.

Azula walked closer, her footfalls quiet and steady, her back straight, her chin held level, her eye contact unwavering. "When I had my first period, father invited me into his room. I went. I had sex with him."

She reached his platform. He still did nothing.

Azula waited. She tried not to shiver in the cold.

Eventually, Wan Shi Tong blinked and asked, "Why do you say this?"

"It's an answer. To that question you asked. You wanted to know why my fire was blue." She gestured with one hand at herself and shrugged. "The morning after I lost my virginity, my fire burned blue. I knew it was because I was different inside; I could do what others saw as disgusting or wrong, and I could do it simply because I wanted to. My mind was cold. I'm still not certain as to the mechanics of how fire can burn that color, but I know that my fire comes from me—_came_ from me—and it was just as cold and clear as my mind."

Wan Shi Tong nodded. "Thank you. I was most curious."

"So," she said, "what is this place? I have a feeling that it's not your Library. Is it some kind of prison?"

"Many would think so. Others would call it a school."

"What do you call it?"

"Does every location truly need a name?"

Azula was silent. She did not break eye contact.

Wan Shi Tong blinked and said, "I call it a playground."

Now it was her turn to blink. "A _playground_?"

"Indeed. Is a playground not where all children learn the boundaries of behavior, the realities of life? One learns self-defense in playground scuffles, politics in playground groups, and the peer pressure that comes from being surrounded by a mob of others, and the reality of the never-ending, inarguable _unfairness_ of life—that some are smarter, or stronger, or faster, and no amount of talent can make one better than practice."

"And why do you think I should be here?"

Wan Shi Tong said nothing.

"I've already gone to schools. I've already been on the playground. I'm an adult now, Wan Shi Tong, and I'm your student." She was amazed by the discovery that she was asking for help. "Teach me already. Let me be your disciple."

He shook his feathered head, pityingly. "Do you think that a process so complex as choosing my disciple can be entrusted to a test like the cave? Oh, no, no, no, child. There is _learning_ that must be done. Education. Trial, and error—more error than not I'm afraid. And practice. Practice, practice, practice."

"What are you talking about?" Despair settled like a weight in her lungs. "I've done what you needed me to do. If I could get out of that cave, I can do anything! I _passed_ your test, already!"

"Passed the test?" Wan Shi Tong continued shaking his head. "Child. You haven't even begun preparing for it."

"Don't call me that!"

"That is what you are."

"I'm an adult! I've fought in _wars_, you gigantic bird! I've commanded armies! I've done more than you think!"

"And you think less than you've done." He spread his wings, flapped once, and landed on the ground beside her. "Your education in the cave? The colors were not your rite of passage. They were your birth. Just like all the others."

The words stopped her breath. "Others?"

"You did not honestly believe that you were the only one who sought out my Library?" He began walking towards the door that she had entered through. "Come. It is time for you to meet your classmates."


	5. Chapter 5

They stepped out onto a large balcony and looked down. Azula's eyes narrowed.

"What is this?"

As far as the eye could see, there were trees. Enormous trees. The balcony that they stood on was raised higher than the treeline, and Azula found herself looking at an ocean of dark green. The sun was already high overhead, with not a cloud to be noticed, and the temperature was bitterly cold—much too cold to be walking around outside without clothes on. She felt certain that, had there been any clouds above them, it would be snowing.

But she wasn't looking at the sky anymore, or the treeline.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Wan Shi Tong said from her left.

She had to repress the urge to step back. "These are your _students_?"

Directly below them was a clearing the length of an iceberg, with a gurgling river passing by on their left. And spread out, everywhere, from water to grass to tree, were people. Dozens of people, perhaps even a hundred. Of all ages, all nations, every one of them naked, every one of them hairless, and every one of them working, moving, _doing_ things as fast as their bodies could move.

Each task seemed more pointless than the next.

Along the bank of the river, three men dug clay out of the freezing ground with their bare hands, clawing at the earth and gritting their teeth with the effort. Wading through the water was a line of women carrying large river stones above their heads, carrying them to another group of men who were smashing them together against each other, their hands cut and bleeding, the veins in their arms bulging. A little farther away, six others dug holes in the earth. A dozen went back and forth to the treeline, climbing dead oaks and pulling them to the ground with their combined weight.

All of them were silent.

"This…" Azula shook her head. "This is _insane_. How can you call this beautiful?"

"Because I see it for what it will become, not for what it currently is. You are looking at a sprouting seed, child. I am creating a garden of humanity." He touched her arm with a feather, his eyes dancing. "Follow me."

He led her out onto the grounds. It was cold, and hard, and the shivers took her immediately. "But what are these people _doing_?" she asked, wrapping her arms around her tightly. "How does this teach them anything?"

"They are experiencing life, little one. They are all as much a child as you are—fresh from the cave's womb. You are merely the last of the litter. And I am your loving guardian, here to guide you in the necessary ways of advancing through life, and becoming worthy of adulthood."

She didn't think any adulthood was worth the price she'd already paid.

"And as your guardian," he went on, "it is my duty to provide you with the vital skills you need to grow up." He gestured with one hand. "There is no better method of learning than experience."

"Y-you've gotten your facts mixed up," she chattered. "If you w-want us to advance, then you don't _move us backward in time_. All of the nations w-were already _more_ advanced than this—you've put your students into the _beginning_ of civilization, instead of furthering us along from w-where we were!"

"Were you not listening?" he asked. "You are a child. You are _at_ the beginning of civilization. This is your world, now, and it is cold, and cruel, and the basic rule of existence still applies: grow, or die."

"It's so…" Azula's fists clenched helplessly. "You're a monster, d-did you know that?"

"I will not argue names with you, child. I am what I am, not what I think I am, and life is identical. It has always been so. A never-ending battle, bloody in tooth, fang, and claw. This is perhaps one of the greatest of life's teachings: nature will never delude you. A creature of the forest will never waste energy or time pretending that things are not so."

"But you h-have your students w-waste their time like _this_?" She gestured at the silent, scurrying mass. "Doing pointless exercises?"

"Poor little one." His wings rippled in a noticeable shrug. "Do you ever get embarrassed from being so thoroughly and consistently mistaken? You are doubly wrong: their time is not wasted, and their 'exercises,' as you call them, are not pointless. Look again. Look closely."

Trembling violently, she did as instructed. She watched as the males digging clay from the river banks filled their arms with the mud and carry their work into the center of the clearing. Then as one they began coating their skin, from head to toe, with the dark clay. They even helped coat each others' backs.

_Insulation_, she realized. _They're using clay to help lock in body heat._

It was then that she realized that, out of everyone on Wan Shi Tong's playground, she was the only one who was shivering. Everyone was moving quickly, breathing hard, keeping their blood hot, while she stood motionless and continued to shiver.

And that wasn't all. She saw that the river rocks being banged and shattered were actually being shaped into rough tools—already three sharp shards the size of axe-heads were being used on wood…wood that had come from a recently felled dead oak tree. The holes that were being dug into the earth were actually straight plows—were these people actually preparing to farm? Where would they get the seeds?

"It's a do-over," she whispered. "You're restarting humanity from the beginning."

Wan Shi Tong nodded, looking pleased that she had figured it out. "Long ago, humans knew their place in the world. Then they decided that they would be _above_ the world, instead of a part of it. Thus they condemned themselves to eternal childhood, lost in a dreamland of their own construction. I will not have such a child in my Library. And I will not allow such ignorance to continue without trying to stop it."

"That's why you're searching for an apprentice, isn't it?" she asked. "You want someone to help you reshape the world. _Restart_ _it_."

"You have already learned this lesson," he said. "If someone hurts long enough, sooner or later they decide to do something about it. Surely a Firebender such as yourself knows that when a forest grows too wild, a cleansing fire is sent from the sky. It is natural, and inevitable." He went silent.

"In that case…" Azula took a deep breath, held it, and nodded. "I'll get to work on making a fire."

* * *

The severed child's head bounced once on his mattress, then rolled against his leg, and Fire Lord Zuko woke up.

He groped for it, struggling through the chains of heavy sleep interrupted. His eyelids parted with the slow rip of shredding meat. Layers of dreams disappeared into smoke—he had been dreaming of the old days again. Of the time before he was a ruler. Back when he was in the upswing of life.

He found the object that had woken him, his fingers flapping blindly across it. Not a head, of course, it was a ball; a kid's ball, the one he used to play around with his little girl. She must've sneaked into the room again—rude interruptions were normally her way of telling Mom and Dad to get their lazy asses up and take her out for their morning family walk.

He rolled over and sighed, inhaling deep and whooshing it out to get his heart pumping a little faster. "Mai? Open the curtains," he muttered. "We need some light in here." And it was too early to start setting his own palms on fire.

_Strange ball, though,_ he thought as he put his hands around it. Weird shape, kind of irregular, and the texture was strange, too—smooth and soft over a hard surface, almost like bone—and what was that? Hair? Someone had glued _hair_ onto the ball?

At the same time that he realized that Mai wasn't moving at all and his daughter wasn't making any sound, his hand found the ragged shreds of flesh that remained of the neck, and the oily texture of fresh blood coated his hands, and a humid, lusty voice spoke from the foot of the bed.

"So, brother…" the monster said as she took one step onto the mattress. "I hear that you're a cripple now…"

And the head in his hand was his daughter's, and the shadow at his feet was Azula.

Flame blossomed in his sister's hand, the color of electricity and ice, and Fire Lord Zuko's legs would not move.

* * *

Zuko gasped and shot upright. A warm hand cupped his shoulder.

"Zuko, it's okay," Mai whispered from close by. "It's okay. Just a nightmare, that's all. It's all okay."

He clenched his teeth, biting down on his courage until he could open his eyes and look at his wife. She knelt by his side, her hair a tousled black halo darker than the lightless room, her eyes alert and almost luminous, a faint crease of concern between her brows.

"Was I—?" he started, then stopped. He couldn't say it. Screaming.

She nodded anyway. "Azula again?"

"Yeah."

"Those always seem to be the worst."

"Yeah." He rolled over and sat up, putting both legs on the hard marble floor. "Tell me about it."

"I wish you'd tell _me_," she said. Her voice sounded hesitant at first, but Mai was never one to hesitate for very long. "You said something about your daughter, this time."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"Weird."

"Why dream about a daughter you don't have?"

"Mai. It was a dream. They don't make much sense, on average."

He heard Mai's arms cross. Waiting for more of an explanation. More storytelling.

_Not tonight._ He stood up, and grabbed his clothes.

"Where are you going?"

"For a walk."

"In the middle of the night? Zuko, it's hours before sunup!"

"Yeah, I…I need to clear my head. I do that, sometimes."

"You're going to visit _him_, aren't you." There was no question in her voice.

He started to snarl something at her, but stopped himself. Who was he to complain about accurate shots to his heart? "I'll be back soon, I promise. Look, sometimes I just need to talk to him—"

Her eyes pinched shut, and her lips compressed into a thin white line. When he saw the look on her face, he wished that he'd just bitten his tongue off and swallowed the blood.

"Sometimes," she said slowly, "I still let myself hope that you might want to talk with me."

"Oh, Mai, don't—look, I _do_ talk to you." He did; whenever he could stand to hear for the billionth time how he should just Stop Fighting His Family Ghosts, or how he should Stop Living In The Past, and shit like that. But he couldn't let her see that, even on his face, and he'd promised himself over and over that he would never hurt the last thing he had to family these days. "I'm sorry." He turned to go.

"Be careful with him, Zuko. You can't trust him. He's _dangerous_, same as he ever was."

"Yes. He is." He walked out of the room, muttering to himself, "Just like I used to be."

* * *

Azula saw Wan Shi Tong perched on top of the monastery walls, and tried to ignore him as she made her way to the river, spear in hand. She scratched her scalp; black hair had grown out enough for it to start curling. It was filthy, caked with dirt and mud and the scent of pine smoke, and it itched—but not as bad as the thin, coarse hair that sprouted from beneath her underarms and along her legs. She was often surprised at how much hair actually grew on a female body.

She waded into the stream until the waterline was at her hips, and waited. It was a torturous ordeal, staying still in the freezing conditions—but it was only painful, and the ache of a starving belly was just as torturous.

Wan Shi Tong was still watching. She hadn't seen him since her first day at the monastery. That had been, by her best estimate, weeks ago. Possibly months.

At the monastery, life was simple. The one rule was to survive. The only other 'rule', so to speak, was not to talk. Ever. This rule had confused Azula at first—how would they all survive if they couldn't effectively communicate?—but her confusion didn't matter. As soon as she had tried to protest, she felt her body convulse, her throat clench tight, and her skin crackled with pain.

Apparently leaving the cave behind had nothing to do with leaving the colors behind. Wan Shi Tong had them all on a very tight leash.

So, like everyone else, she did everything she could to survive. And, like everyone else, she had discovered that becoming silent was, in its own perverse way, an improvement to communication. No time was wasted in argument. No petty disagreements could interfere with the progress of the group's advancement.

And advance they did. Her classmates each had their own wealthy stores of knowledge; they weren't _entirely_ babes in the woods. She remembered teaching several others about how to make fire, even without the ability to Bend it. Fire, she taught through movements and hand signals, could not be rushed, no matter how cold you were. You had to make a nice home for fire to grow in. You had to be willing to spend the necessary energy to produce heat from two sticks, and enough of it to grow into a coal. Fire was magical, but it would not appear from a spell—flame demanded ritual instead.

And it was much the same for the other elements as well. The Earthbenders could easily identify which timber was good for burning, and which could be used for tools or weapons. A certain stone might be perfect for chiseling into a crude blade, while another stone produced sparks when struck properly. They showed others how to track animals and read their prints in the dirt: from a single paw print, Azula could now determine if the species was an armadillo-bear or weasel-bear, its sex, weight, direction it was going, which way it was looking, and how fast it was traveling. Very soon, all members of the class carried some kind of spear, and a few of the craftier ones had recently constructed bows and arrows, and experimenting as to whether a bowstring should be made of root, vine, or dried animal intestine.

But it was the Waterbenders who had shown the most proficiency in gaining food: instead of spearing big game in the forests, they hopped stones out into the river and caught fish after fish after fish. Azula had tried to imitate their success—the fish seemed to spear themselves when a Waterbender was doing it, it seemed too easy—but she was always, without fail, either too slow or just plain off target.

It wasn't until after the third day of no food that her pride broke, and she communicated to a Waterbender male around twice her age that she simply didn't know what was wrong. He explained through gestures the secret technique: the surface of the water bent light by a small degree. While from above it looked like she was aiming for the fish's center, her speartip was actually missing the fish by a hair's breadth.

The next time, she aimed at the fish's belly instead of the spine. It was a direct hit.

Together, they all shared their secrets with each other. And together they learned the lessons that nature provided. Food was everything. Always, always, always they were on the lookout for any type of food, from berries to birds, from fish to lizards, and they never stopped trying to find ways to get more of it. Work for the food went on and on.

The lesson?

Nothing in nature was lazy.

And now here she was. Literally freezing her ass off, just to eat a meal. She made sure that the speartip was a foot from the river bottom, placed one hand on the spear's back, and waited. The fish always came.

"Good morning."

"Quiet." She didn't look at him…and then didn't move at all—the newfound ability to speak left her, ironically, speechless. Was she allowed to talk only when he talked to her first? Would he punish her for saying anything rude or disrespectful? She tried to find out, and said, "I don't need you to scare away the fish."

"I have no need to. I do not eat."

One of the joys of being a deific being, no doubt. Azula wondered what it must be like—never feeling hunger, surely it was bliss, she felt as if she'd been starving her whole life and she'd probably be starving for the rest of it—but she said nothing. Only waited with predatory patience.

Wan Shi Tong followed her example.

Eventually, a large trout crept out from beneath a rock and drifted closer to her legs. She realigned her spear by inches, slowly intersecting its path.

"I am curious," he said. "Why do you wade out here in the water? There are rocks to use, stepping stones where others have caught their meals and kept dry."

Stab. She felt the spear go cleanly through the fish's body, and lifted it out of the water, staring triumphantly at her kill. It was a big one. She held it closer to Wan Shi Tong and said, "This is why. Bigger fish don't go near the stepping stones. They grew smart enough to know that that's where we kill them." She waded out of the water and used the speartip's point to tear a jagged hole in the fish's guts, cleaning it out and tossing the pile back into the water. _Let the smaller fish feed on their brother's entrails. Let it make them bigger and more delicious._

The shivers overtook her when she regained the feeling in her legs. The fire pit. She had to get there and dry off, immediately. She hobbled over on shaking legs and hoped that she wouldn't lose any toes.

"You've been evolving," Wan Shi Tong stated. "I see tools, weapons for hunting. Curious, though: why have you made shelters? My monastery is open to you all to sleep in once the sun sets."

Azula kept her jaw tightly shut as she rubbed furiously at her thighs, dangerously close to the flames. The great stone building in front of her was the only real protection that the Knowledge Spirit provided them; when the sun set, the great wooden doors would boom open, and they would all go inside for the night. It was bliss, falling onto the soft beds and pulling thick fur blankets over their shivering bodies.

And it was hell to leave those beds and blankets when the sun rose. But they all had to eat. And they had to work to get food. It did not get things done, lying in a comfortable room. So, as a unit, they would all rise and walk out the open doors, which would close and lock until the sun set.

She gestured to the small makeshift huts that they'd constructed from tree branches, mud, and sod. "Those are for when it rains and we can't get back inside."

"It has not rained yet."

"Doesn't mean that it won't. If it does, and we get caught out in it without a dry place to wait it out, you'll need to find a new class. This one will just be a bunch of ice statues."

His eyes glittered. "Impressive. Most impressive. You are learning to prepare for the inevitable."

She shrugged, and placed her fish over the flames. "It's what an adult would do."

"An adult would not be rewarded by her guardian for extra effort shown. You, child, have already shown yourself to exceed the others—that fish you took risks for would never have been caught, had you not gone where no one else would dare. And your classmates have all gone to their own respective lengths to help themselves and each other. You all have done well."

"Thanks." She shrugged. "I guess."

"You have nothing yet to be grateful for. Yet. Allow me to present your reward."

As Azula watched, the great owl shot into the air. Skimming low over a bare patch of ground, he flapped his wings furiously—and with each flap came a tiny rain of gleaming, crystalline seeds. They landed on the hard winter ground and sank into it like raindrops.

With every head in the tribe watching, he raised himself higher and spoke, "I have planted you seeds for a garden. For now they sleep, locked in the earth's womb. Work hard to arouse them from their slumber, and you shall have farms. I shall bring you springtime, and with it, warmth. Continue to do as you have done, and you will find your playground turning into a paradise of your own craftsmanship." He wheeled away, departing with a final word before disappearing into the sky.

"I am very proud of you all, my children."

* * *

The candlelight illuminated only half of the prisoner's face. His eyes glittered like onyx jewels. "Another sleepless night, my Lord?"

"Dammit," Zuko said for what felt like the millionth time. "If I have the decency to call you Father, you can have the decency to call me by my name." But this protest had become a reflex, and Zuko could hear the insecurity that blunted its edge.

Ozai heard it too. One slender eyebrow arched, and the corner of his mouth that was illuminated by firelight stretched. "Protocol should be observed, your highness. I wouldn't _dare_ presume to put you on the same level as a heinous war criminal such as I."

"Forget it," Zuko muttered. He lacked the strength to shoulder Ozai's heavy irony tonight. He turned and headed for the prison exit. "Just…forget it."

"Zuko, wait." Ozai's body shifted, and he passed a hand over his face, as if her were putting on the guise of a different man. "Please—son—forgive my tone. I've been alone with bitter thoughts for too long, and I spoke without thinking."

Zuko stopped.

"I would be glad for your company tonight. Should you wish it."

He turned again to look his father in the eye, studying his face. Dark pools beneath the eyes, new creases and sags on his once-flawless skin, and the downtwist corners of lips that had once only known rare smiles.

Zuko thought, _Do I look as bad as he does?_

"I was thinking," he said slowly, "that you and I could go for a walk."

Ozai's downtwists flattened into what might have been a smile, long ago. "Into the Nation?"

He shrugged, like it didn't matter. "Interested?"

"Of course. I enjoy the old neighborhood; I find it stimulating to see the changes. Rather like seeing a tiny ocean of predators and prey mingling together." He cocked his head to the side and asked, "When was the last time you hurt someone you loved?"

Zuko's good eye twitched. "You should know. You were there."

"Mm. Yes. But, one never knows—perhaps tonight we may be lucky enough to be attacked by some of the, ah, Citizens Of The World Family, as our holy Avatar likes to call them."

* * *

"I once thought," Ozai said beside his shoulder, "that I understood why you come here. I believed that you needed to see what an extraordinary journey your life has been. From here, one can see where you were at during the lowest point of your life—" He nodded at a street beggar, curled up in an alleyway, then turned to regard the spires of the Fire Nation Palace only three miles away. "—and the pinnacle of your greatest achievement. Yet, for some reason, this contrast does not seem to improve your mood."

Zuko didn't need to look at his father to know the expression he was wearing: a mask of polite interest that concealed a savage hunger. The former Fire Lord had an intense interest in anything which might cause his son pain.

Zuko didn't hold a grudge against that interest. In a way, he'd earned it.

"That's not why I come here," he said quietly. He lifted a hand and gestured at the beggar. "Sometimes I just have to remind myself that it's a long way down from where I am."

Ozai said slowly, "You are considering a leap?"

Zuko rolled his eyes and continued walking.

"Is that why you bring me along on these walks? Do you think that I hate my own son so much, I would try to make him jump?"

"Don't you?" He squinted through his one good eye at the man beside him. Ozai wore the simple tunic and leggings afforded to all prisoners. His hands were shackled behind his back, but he seemed to feel completely at ease, completely free. Middle age was softening his sharp, angular features, but he still had the regal stature of the Lord he had once been.

"Of course I do," Ozai said. "I have dreamed of your death, my son. I have lusted for it, ached for it, as the celibate lust for sex and the drowning ache for air. Your death would never grant me my freedom, but it would ease—if only for the few seconds that I crush your life between my fingers—the suffering of my imprisonment."

"Could be worse than prison," Zuko shrugged. "I could've burnt your face off."

"There are times I wonder why you haven't."

"We've had these talks before. Why haven't you ever tried to kill me?"

Ozai lowered his gaze, examining the sidewalk that they traveled over. "Because once done, I would be without purpose. I have no other dreams for this world. And further, I confess that I would miss you."

This surprised Zuko enough that he looked at his father with a raised brow. "You would?"

"Sadly, yes." He sighed. "I find myself living more and more inside memories of the past. Locked in isolation, with the Fire Lord as my sole permitted visitor, you are the only comfort of my captivity. You are the only man alive who truly remembers—who has _experienced_, who truly _appreciates_—the powerful king I once was."

This cut a little too close to home for Zuko. "Don't you—" he began slowly, then started again. "Do you ever think of escaping?"

"Of course. My freedom is never far from my thoughts—always followed, of course, by my inevitable regaining of the throne, enslavement of my enemies, and victory over the Avatar. And after such dreams, I am rewarded with the bitter wound of knowing that I will never feel the breeze that blows on such a paradise." He released a small, grim chuckle. "Terrible, isn't it? What a pathetic waste I've become."

"Life turns out that way sometimes," Zuko nodded. "You should be used to it by now."

"Really?" Ozai came to a halt. "And how is it that I can find my current nightmare _tolerable_?"

"That's easy. Blame it on me." Zuko snorted. "Who do _I_ blame?"

Dark brows raised high over a pale face as Ozai considered this. "Extraordinary," he hummed at last. "It is a consistent surprise to me that you somehow always seem to be just a bit smarter than I anticipate, son."

"Flatterer."

They walked on for some time, sharing a companionable silence. It was nearly a mile before Ozai stated, "You did not rouse us both in the middle of the night for idle conversation."

"Just needed some verbal abuse. Nobody does that better than you."

Ozai smiled a grin of pure delight. "Mmm. I think I see." He nodded to himself. "You don't have someone to fight, do you? Even I have heard the whispers from one guard to another—my daughter escaped her prison. She hasn't emerged from hiding yet, has she? Perhaps that is why you expose yourself to such risks, parading me around through these streets. You want her to take the bait. You want to fight her, and wage your lives as victory prizes."

"Want to fight for my life? Right." He batted a hand in the air, dismissing the possibility. "Fighting and death. That's what I was trying to get away from in the first place. All of us were."

"Us?"

"We _won_, dammit. We beat Azula. We beat _you_. I got everything I ever wanted—my honor, my nation, my strength, my rightful place on the throne. I even got _the girl_. I got my happily ever after, and I'm _living_ it."

"Ah. So it is _happiness_ that has brought you to these streets, at this hour, with this prisoner. I have always supposed that living_ happily ever after_ at so early in the morning would somehow involve lying in bed, asleep, your morning erection pressing against your wife's _cunt_."

In the past, such a remark would have earned the immediate execution of any prisoner.

Zuko simply looked at the ground below his feet. "It's…I don't know what it is. Sometimes, late at night…" He shook his head, driving away the thought. He took a slow breath. "Forget it. This is just…Fire Lord business nonsense, I guess."

Ozai looked at Zuko as if he'd just bitten into something sour. "Is that the name you've labeled your problems with? Fire Lord business nonsense?"

"I doubt you've got a better name—"

"Stop," Ozai said. His gaze smoked; it held Zuko tight. He stood with feet planted, and if his hands weren't chained behind his back Zuko knew he would be trying to place a palm onto his shoulder. "You cannot trivialize your pain with _nomenclature_, son. You forget to whom you speak."

Zuko did not say anything.

"In this way, we are truly related. I have felt what you feel, and we both know that no mere words can contain the injury of fighting an enemy that refuses to surface. Not having an enemy to fight is, itself, a wound for those with warrior souls. Like a cancer, like _gangrene_, it grows worse with every passing hour. That is not, nor will it ever be, _nonsense_. And not one source of wisdom can heal your pain, whether it comes from a kindly old uncle, or a wise young Avatar, or tyrannical prisoner father."

Zuko's mixed feelings for his tyrannical prisoner father rushed through him, leaving him feeling sick and bleak and bitter. His hands throbbed and his mouth tasted like wine spoiled in the sun. "Uncle taught me the Question of Self," he said. "Do you remember it?"

"Indeed." Ozai nodded. "Who are you, and what do you want. I know it well."

"I can tell you…" Zuko said slowly. "I can tell you _exactly_ what I want."

He looked away from his father and stared out at the horizon. Away from the Fire Nation buildings, and out toward the rising sun.

"I want to find Azula. I want to _meet_ her again. I'm not asking for much—I just want to finish our Agni Kai once and for all." He pressed both fists against his legs, and said through clenched teeth. "I want to get my _hands_ on her."

Ozai loomed beside his son, blank, impenetrable, inhuman. A pale marble statue with midnight hair and crimson prisoner robes. "This is a dream I can help you realize, son. But be careful what you wish. A very wise man of the past has said that when the Spirits wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

"You can help make it happen, huh?" He looked at his father with scorn. "You can bring her _back_?"

"Perhaps. I can certainly bring her to _you._"

"Forget it." He turned and began making his way back to his home. "You've never _helped_ me do anything. I'm not going to rely on you, and I'm definitely not going to trust you. Come on."

"At once, my Lord." Ozai knew that his son couldn't see him, but the smile was audible in his voice.


	6. Chapter 6

Suki found that lowering her naked body into the scalding water was a long, painful process. The mineral salts found every single cut, scrape, scratch, and scab, and stung like a bastard in all of them. This was her first bath in nearly a month, if she didn't count the occasional thunderstorm or that time getting thrown overboard. The astonishing variety of minor wounds gave her enough distinct, individual pangs to start tears welling up—tears not of pain, but of a bone-deep process of unclenching toward relaxation that bordered on excruciating.

Stone cuts, bramble scratches, skinned knees and bloody knuckles; a broad stripe up one side of her back was where she'd skidded down some rocks while dodging a renegade Yu Yan Archer's shot. Each announced itself in turn, and then faded behind in a tingle of opening pores and loosening muscles.

Eventually she slid fully underwater and unbraided her hair, shaking it free and sliding her fingers through it to loosen the sweat and the grit and the greasy dust that caked it. Sokka liked her hair, no matter what state it was in, he said, but discipline would never allow her to neglect proper care of her locks.

They had had enough of Ba Sing Se for a while. She was heading back to Kyoshi Island, and she was going to stay there. Sokka had been only too enthusiastic to agree—or, as he'd put it, "These normal people are so _weird_."_—_and they'd immediately packed everything they needed and set out on foot. The plan was to travel by land over to the coastline; a strategy that would take many weeks, but one that would bring them both back to the old days. If they found any leads on the way directing them to Azula, then they'd chase them. If not, then oh well, at least they were heading home.

The first surprise had come when Toph asked to come along. Apparently the easy life of serving drinks at a tea bar had finally gotten to her; the girl was starving for a change of pace.

The surprises had kept on coming, one after the other, and almost all of them coming in the form of some attacker or another. Highwaymen on the roads, pirates on river barges, and just plain common pickpockets seemed to plague them at least once a day. Not much of a problem when a gifted Earthbender could "see" the dangers approaching from a mile away, but the constant attacks had gotten worse as the days progressed, almost as if the criminal underworld had a communication system, and word was going out that there were three travelers who apparently could not be robbed from.

Despite the Avatar's re-emergence into the world, people still had to get used to a change in leadership—and, as a result of any change in leadership, some people just couldn't resist using the unsteady balances of power for their own personal gains. Crime was getting worse.

They'd decided as a unit to stop by one of the many new Air Temples before heading out to sea—Toph refused to travel by boat, and there was still only one place to find a flying bison.

Aang considered it a huge priority to replenish the population of Airbenders so that the Avatar Spirit could live on in the future. Thousands of non-benders had voluntarily flocked to these new monasteries in order to learn the Way Of The Airbender, filling their halls with like-minded spirituality and training.

So far, not one of them had produced a single Airbender.

But that didn't stop anyone. The followers kept coming, and the Avatar continued to teach.

Still underwater, Suki moaned internally. She wished Sokka was with her now, and not taking his own bath in another guest tub. Toph, of course, had made other plans, having little interest in bathing—she'd wandered off in the company of a burly, hard-faced young monk, carrying a bottle of wine and a leashed goat, and Suki had no desire to ever learn what it was they planned on doing with them. She was just fine knowing that Toph had finally discovered alcohol and sex, and left the girl to be responsible for herself.

She scrubbed at her face under the water, and then surfaced with a gasp, starting to feel human again.

"You have really pretty hair."

The voice was a child's, a girl's, and Suki thought she already knew who this might be. She rubbed soap out of her eyes. A little girl stood near the foot of the washtub, clasping her hands behind her in a show of shyness that Suki guessed was almost entirely pretended. She had dark skin, jet black hair styled with twin loops in a Waterbender's style, her face was a flawless oval, and her eyes were like liquid aquamarine gemstones.

Suki said, "Thank you."

"Daddy says you're a really nice lady," the little girl said with a pretty smile.

"You're Katara's little girl," Suki said.

She lifted her chin. "I'm the Avatar's daughter. Mommy says I'm a princess."

_You've got the attitude part down,_ Suki thought, but she said, "Really? I'm a princess, too."

"Oh, you are _not_!"

"I am, really. Swear it."

"Nuh-_uh_." The little princess folded her arms huffily. "Princesses live in castles and temples and learn how to help people and wear pretty clothes. They don't run around getting dirty and getting into fights."

"That's what princesses do where _I'm _from."

"Really?" The pretty smile disappeared into a skeptical frown, and her eyes narrowed. "Do they _really_?"

"Well, not all of them. Some of them are pretty much like princesses everywhere, except instead of learning how to help people and wear pretty clothes they learn how to have babies and clean houses."

"I don't think that sounds like much fun."

"Me neither. That's why I run around getting dirty and getting into fights," Suki explained with a smile. "What's your name?"

"Vidia," she replied proudly. "_I _can read."

"Me too."

"You can_not_!"

"I can." She drew the symbols for Vidia's name in the soap suds that blanketed the surface of the bath.

Vidia's bottom lip stuck out. "No matter what I say, you're gonna tell me you can do it, too."

"How old are you, Vidia?"

"This many," she said, raising four fingers.

"That many, huh?" Suki said. "I've thought of something you can do that I can't."

"What?"

"Brush my hair."

"Hmm…all right," Vidia said with a shrug. "Can I braid it too?"

"Sure, if you like. Bring that pitcher and rinse me out."

The water that Vidia poured through her hair was refreshingly chilly, and the little girl helped Suki towel it down one strand at a time so it wouldn't tangle. While she waited for her hair to dry a little, Suki climbed out of the tub and got her clothes, to wash them in the grey-brown bathwater.

Vidia's eyes went wide. "You sure do have a lot of scars."

"I do," Suki agreed as she mopped beadwater from her limbs. "Nearly every one of them was a cut that should have killed me."

"How'd you get that one?" she pointed to a young scar across her right shoulder. "Is it new?"

Suki chuckled. "This I got from an old friend of mine. She chopped at me with a sparring sword and I wasn't fast enough to block it right."

"Did it hurt?"

"No, not really."

"Why'd she do it? Was she a bad person?"

"No. No, she was—is—a very good person. We were just practicing, trying to get better at fighting, so we could be ready whenever someone tries to _really_ hurt us. Those are the bad people."

"Like Azula?"

Suki gave her a sharp look. "What do you know about Azula?"

"I hear Mommy and Daddy talking about her, with those army guys who come in every now and then." She shrugged. "She wants to hurt us. She's a bad person. But no one can find her, I heard Uncle Iroh say so. How is anyone going to kill her?"

"I don't think Uncle Iroh wants to kill her," Suki said carefully, hoping that she was right. "I think he just wants to catch her and put her in jail."

"I know what _Uncle_ wants to do," she said with exasperation. "I'm not a baby. I want to know what _you_ want to do."

Suki froze, her heart in her throat. Somehow, she felt that this child deserved more than a glib _you'll understand when you grow up_ kind of answer, and she certainly didn't want to come across as a murdering psycho-woman; daughters tell their mothers everything at that age. "I don't know for sure," she said thoughtfully. "I've been fighting people like her since before you were born, V. All I want to do is make sure that she can't hurt anyone else anymore."

* * *

**From The Private Journals of Wan Shi Tong**

**Many years past I thought I had lost my capacity for amazement. I was mistaken. The child amazes me every day. She has already developed faster than any of the others, and there seems to be no limit to her potential.**

**I have begun to have disturbing thoughts; they fill me with what I believe, intellectually, is a false hope. They concern my plans for the human world and the child's role in its metamorphosis. She may yet prove unworthy of the benevolence I contemplate bestowing upon her; there is still the ritual ahead of her. Though she herself has no inkling of it, the child will face her final trials very soon. I will know if she has true strength—for if human kind is to be saved, it will be saved by those willing to do all that is necessary.**

**If she does not fail, then her training may begin in earnest.**

* * *

Azula lay down on top of the tree branch, gripping it with her thighs, leaving both hands free to handle the bow. Directly below her, a pantherwolf group made their way silently through the jungle. She checked closely—some noses were to the ground, scanning over fallen leaves.

They were hunting.

And Azula was their quarry.

She held still, thankful that she was high enough that the bugs couldn't get to her. Her coating of mud was effective protection against their bites, yes, but the high-pitched whine and ticklish brush of their wings against her ears could bring on a twitch that might give away her position.

One of the pantherwolves stopped at the base of her tree. It sniffed the bark. Walked around its perimeter. Sniffed again, and then looked up.

_Damn._

"_Rowlf-shnn."_ The creature's tiny bark alerted his packmates, and as a unit all twelve beastly heads turned and locked onto her position.

_Damn, damn, damn._

Twelve pantherwolves. Twelve. And she only had six arrows.

_Things are about to get interesting._

She stayed where she was. This may not have been a classical battle, but old training died hard for her, and as long as she had the high ground she would do everything needed to keep it. She couldn't simply wait them out from her perch: Pantherwolves had more patience than her body had food stores. Not that they needed it—those claws were well suited for climbing trees.

Which they started to do.

She got to her feet and balanced on the wide branch—easy enough; Azula could walk tightrope if needed, and the tree limb was as wide as a sidewalk. She pulled back her first arrow, aimed down, and fired.

It sank directly into the chest of the leading pantherwolf. The creature fell, its high-pitched scream raising the hair on every neck around it. When it hit the jungle floor it thrashed and shuddered, fighting for its life as the death throes took it.

Azula didn't bother to watch. She was already aiming at the next in line.

Arrow after arrow leapt out from her bow, and the jungle was filled with the screams of dying beasts and the twang of bowstring. Each shaft hit her target precisely. Each animal she aimed for was given a mortal wound.

_They're always mortal wounds,_ she thought as her final arrow dropped through the air, buried deep into the beast's neck. _Any kind of wound out here is a death sentence._

* * *

Wan Shi Tong looked pleased at such an observation. "And then what happened?"

Azula put down her cup of tea and swallowed. "I'm not sure. Whatever remained of them, they stopped climbing up after me. When those that I shot had died, the remaining six just turned around and left. I scared them off, most likely. Made them think I wasn't worth hunting."

This was not the first time that she had had tea with the great owl. For several months, Wan Shi Tong had decided to have daily talks with her over warm cups. He would often give her puzzles and riddles to solve. Or ask her to work arithmetic problems mentally. Several times he gave her tasks to perform outside the monastery walls—once he requested that she stand alone on the rooftop for an entire night. No explanation was ever given. She did not ask why.

She sensed, however, that nothing anyone did at the monastery was done randomly. Every activity, no matter how inconsequential, was part of Wan Shi Tong's carefully planned curriculum.

Most recently, he'd instructed all of the fighters from the Earth and Water regions to teach her their styles of fighting. Her tutors were not kind. Jeriko, a former Earthbender, and Yueng of the Water Tribe were unrelentingly critical and showed absolutely no tolerance for blunders. And blunder she did.

She'd often imagined herself well versed in the martial arts, especially from her experience chasing after the Avatar and his followers—in fact, she had won most of her fights with them. But against the opponents she faced in the monastery, she was too predictable, too flashy, more dancer than fighter. Her attacks were either met head-on and overpowered, or, most infuriatingly, manipulated to throw her off balance.

But she learned. Soon she could flow against a flurry of punches, or crash like a tsunami, or stand hard and strong against any kick. And she did not make the same mistake twice.

"It is good to see that you still have no qualms about taking life." He paused as if thinking to himself. "Perhaps that is why you have become something of a leader to your classmates. You possess a darkness in your soul."

Azula raised a hint of a challenging smile. "Darkness? Perhaps."

"No. Definitely. Such a darkness is found in all creatures to some degree. Though I should say that, especially here, it is very, very powerful. Hearts grow dark—what others would call 'evil'—within all creatures in the jungle."

She rolled her eyes. "I think you're putting too much of a spin on the whole darkness thing. We haven't had much evil out there."

"Oh?"

"The pantherwolves were a pack, trying to feed. I was trying to stay alive. What, exactly, is dark about that? We were each behaving naturally."

"And those called evil don't?"

Azula blinked.

"I was under the impression that what you humans call evil is the epitome of naturalness—that is why it is so much easier than being good, yes?"

She felt a breath of air from her own childhood brush against her mind. "Well, yes, but—"

"Is what took place in the jungle today not the pure definition of evil? Isn't aggression, violence, bloodlust, and passion what the good people of your world fear?"

She put her teacup down with a heavy _thunk_. "You want to know what real evil would have looked like? If I had chased after the rest of those pantherwolves and killed them all with my bare hands, just for the fun of it. No reason of survival. Just for the joy of killing."

"Don't all hunters find joy in successful kills? Kill in self defense, it is nature. Kill in hunger, it is good. Kill them all, it is evil? Is the line that separates good from evil only that of ratios? You killed half of that pack—would it have been evil for you to kill three-quarters?"

Azula felt herself heating up. Why was he always throwing these useless questions at her? "It's evil to kill more than you need to kill. More than you need to feed yourself and your family. That's the line."

Wan Shi Tong cocked his head. "And how do you define _need_, exactly? Do you mean the boundaries of starvation, or simple malnutrition? Does a predator—a human—such as yourself sin in evil if she is a few pounds overweight?"

"It's not about _weight_, for crying out—"

"Then what is it about? Are we back to _why_? Is it evil to slaughter half a herd, so long as you _think_ you needed to?"

"Good and evil isn't simple to _describe_," she insisted.

"But you know it when you see it, and then you avoid it, yes?"

"_Yes._"

Wan Shi Tong unfurled one wing and bent it, curving the feathers around like a hand pointing to himself. "Have you seen no evil in _me_?"

* * *

Things had changed.

Progress. Always progress. Things changed so quickly that sometimes it was a struggle to keep up with the continual adaptations.

Azula carried her kill to the fire pits. The thin muscles in her arms bunched and pressed against her flesh as she placed the heavy body of pantherwolf meat down by the coals. Her classmates, a dozen warming up from the rivers, crowded around and stared in amazement.

_Five more,_ she signed to them, pointing into the forest. _Need help carrying._

Nods from everyone. And they all stood up to help.

As she led them through the tangle of jungle, she couldn't help but admire how things were so different. Once upon a time, Fire Princess Azula could have a dozen people serve her with only the effort of a spoken order. Now, she had a dozen people _helping_ her. And she hadn't needed to say a thing.

She remembered the educated masses that had come into the Palace. The Fire Priests and Old Wise Ones, as she called them, had all seemed the same. Dozens of people had spoken about what was _real_ enlightenment, and they shared ideas on what was deep and profound. They all had the same soft-spoken, educated, privileged voice. They talked about reverence towards nature. They all had lessons on The Ways To Live, and they all had soft hands. Palms _and_ knuckles.

At least, back then, Azula had always had hard knuckles.

But it was the people around her presently that seemed to have the deepest wisdom. They not only revered the nature around them, but spent their days living in it, pulling life out of the ground in their gardens, or cutting it out of the flesh found in the jungle. They could not talk. They listened. And their hands were no longer soft.

Their world had changed as well. Spring had come and gone, and summer had arrived. The cold forest had transformed into a warm forest, and then into a warm jungle, filled with animals and vegetation and life. The students of Wan Shi Tong now had clothing made of animal skins. Rawhide strips could bind their hair back. Razors were sharpened from clams, and faces could be shaved. Diets now included fresh fruits, berries, and vegetables grown from the gardens. Rice had been their latest addition to the seed menu.

The class grew stronger. Their hands and feet grew tougher. Their bodies developed intelligence in muscle and movement—they could climb trees, balance across branches, walk silently, kill accurately. Many of them probably wondered how slaughtering forest animals every day would help teach them what it meant to be human.

Azula decided not to explain how humans were _made_ to slaughter.

* * *

**From the Private Journals of Wan Shi Tong.**

**The time is almost upon us. I feel the way the sculptors of old felt when they glanced at blocks of marble that would one day become their masterpieces. **

**Thus far, the child has not been a disappointment. Out of the entire class, her raw material is best suited for my masterpiece. Evolution has been kind to her.**

**In her past life she was proven to have been of great mental accomplishment, though this is merely a public perception. The truth of her is of more interest: She is of huge mental capacity with an intelligence quotient I believe to be among the highest ever recorded. During our conversations she has quoted entire pages of literature—possibly the result of eidetic training. In short, everything she sees or hears while focused can be recalled with total accuracy. If she makes it into the Library, I wonder how quickly she can absorb new information?**

**She is also a splendid physical specimen. The is an optimal balance between fast and slow muscle fibers, a large lung capacity, unimpeded circulation of blood, a delicately responsive nervous system, and excellent muscular distribution—artists might use her as a model for the statues of idealized humans they are so fond of creating.**

**She is ignorant, still, and cannot access all that nature has given her.**

**Those are conditions I can remedy.**

**Hopefully she will survive the next ritual. Her completion of it will signify her ascent into adulthood, and she will graduate from being one in a group, to simply one. Such is the child's intelligence that by now she has surely come to realize that her training has undertones of the training found in military or religious organizations: the minimization of individuality and maximization of sameness in their followers. Indeed, that is what has been done with all of the children, so that their growth becomes both optimal and predictable.**

**However, for centuries I have known that one must deal with extraordinarily gifted individuals differently. I seek to plumb their depths and discover all the strength within them, both physically and mentally. Then I devise a plan to allow them to access and increase their own innate powers. Most of their weaknesses I ignore; if they are as intelligent as I know they are, they will compensate for most of their weaknesses with no help from myself.**

**This, of course, is the purpose of the final Rite. **

**It is unfortunate that not one of my previous students has survived it. I have little doubt that the child's blood will spill onto the floor of this monastery. If she does not survive we shall use fire to dispose of her remains, as is the custom of her people, and she will have died as her predecessors have died, proving herself to be as unworthy as the rest.**

**If she continues to breathe after tonight, I will allow myself to rejoice. **


	7. Chapter 7

A change in the air crackled through Azula's body, and she woke up entirely in the space of a breath. Eyes wide, mouth open, silent breathing. What was it? What had disturbed her sleep? Was it a different sound in the monastery?

No: the _lack_ of sound.

Everything was silent. There was no collection of slumbering breaths being taken by her tribe mates. No collected energy of sleeping students. Azula sat upright and threw off her covers, eyes peering through the darkness to find every sleeping pad empty.

_This,_ she thought blankly, _is different._

Not that she wasn't used to different by now. Although, normally there was someone like Wan Shi Tong around to explain the difference. She threw off her own covers and stood, the starlight from outside shining through the window just brightly enough for her to see where to place her feet. The door to the sleeping chamber was wide open, the hallway empty.

From down the hallway, behind a door that was always locked, Wan Shi Tong's muffled voice said, "Come here."

Azula placed one foot in front of another, walking silently, every sense on high alert. The door opened with a creaking groan, and she found the room to be just as empty as the one she slept in—though this one was bathed in silvery moonlight, courtesy of an enormous, open square hatch placed directly into the ceiling. A wooden ladder descended from the rooftop to the floor, and Wan Shi Tong, invisible on the rooftop, said one word.

"Climb."

Azula obeyed.

When she reached the top, stepping out onto the roof, the double doors of the hatch closed on their own, their twin planks latching together with an audible click that Azula knew, without testing, signified that she was locked out.

The roof of the monastery was wide and flat, a field of stone that would have taken decades for the Fire Nation stonemasons to have built by hand. The night air was brisk and cold, and Wan Shi Tong stood at the lip of the roof's edge, the evening breeze ruffling his feathers, framed beautifully by the snow white moon rising in the east.

Azula waited.

For a long time, the knowledge spirit seemed to be gauging her strength through sheer observation. Before Azula had time to begin shivering, he spoke.

"You came to me so that you would learn," he said. "You wished for access into my Library. You sought sanctuary there. You even requested to become my apprentice. Is this still what you want?"

Azula took her time answering, thinking about what he said. By now she knew that to speak brashly could have terrible consequences.

As she mulled it over in her head, she found that her desires had not changed. She still craved the strength and power that his knowledge would provide. To have access into his Library would grant her glimpses into the stored knowledge of civilizations long dead, of secrets buried beneath more than just sand. And sanctuary? She did not require sanctuary.

But Father did.

Azula looked back into the full eyes of the knowledge spirit and nodded, once.

He tapped a stone with one talon. "Stand by me, and observe."

When she got to his side, the question of her tribes mates' location was answered: below, on the ground, stood every single one of them, and there was something peculiar about them. Each held, in his or her hands, a tool or weapon of some kind. Gardening hoes, shell knives to dissect fish, even bows and arrows and spears for hunting.

Azula, weaponless, began to have an overwhelming, alarmingly bad feeling about this.

"My children," Wan Shi Tong said in a thunderous yet gentle baritone. "My children, you have all grown strong this year. You have clawed your way out from the womb. You have thrived in the world, helping each other, learning, teaching, mastering the land around you. Your gardens are plentiful. Your forests teem with game, for you hunt with a wise method of preservation. Your backs are strong, your skins thick, your senses sharp. Your time spent on the playground is coming to a close, and will end this very evening.

"Now it is time for your final test."

His wing suddenly lashed out in a vicious backhanded swipe that caught Azula full in the face and blasted her backward. The blow hurt. Landing and skidding across the cobblestone rooftop was just as painful, and she snarled with curses.

But the pain was nothing compared to Wan Shi Tong's next words, his next action.

"The final test is this," he announced, flapping both wings and shooting high into the air. "You must kill the Fire Nation child known as Azula. Whoever takes her life will be rewarded with entry into my Library, having proven themselves the strongest of this class."

And she tried to say his name… tried to scream of his betrayal and insanity—

Tried to say—

But the vision in her eyes dissolved into beautiful rainbow colors, and her every nerve ending blossomed into flame, and the screams of agony from scored of students below announced that there would be slaughter this night, carnage of a kind never seen before, violence brought from beasts that were once human beings.

And all Azula could do was wait for them to slay.

* * *

This is the final battle of the child known as Azula:

Her reputation for being blessed with warfare talents have been praised throughout her kingdom. Many people say that she is the best duelist in the Fire Nation, but that is merely talk. Winning court sparring matches, and even the occasional rare Agni Kai, are all a matter of diligent practice and knowledge in one's own abilities. She has spent so many hours training that she wears sweat like clothing.

The battle she faces now transcends a mere Agni Kai the way Sozin's Comet transcends a spark rock.

She stands atop the monastery rooftop, eyes closed. The colors shriek flame through every nerve in her body. She burns in this fire, but knows she will not be consumed. The fire in her mind has distilled everything into one eternal instant of agony; like the cave from so long ago, the colors wash away time and place.

All of Azula's time has become a single _now_ of the colors burning her alive.

But the colors are nothing. Not when compared to her fury, and her hatred, and her decision.

_He wants death?_ She thinks to herself. _I'll give him death._

So she waits.

She has only seconds to devise a winning strategy. Her body is sore and tired, has been so for these many months, her mind fatigued beyond all limits. She has nothing—no weapons, no allies, not even clothing—and she faces a small army wielding everything from gardening tools to shells to firewood clubs. If she is to survive the next few minutes, she will have to kill them all.

This is, simply put, impossible.

It cannot be done.

She is going to do it anyway.

Because she is Azula, and she is _done_ being an obedient child.

She has no interest in the serene acceptance of death that have been the hallmark of many great warriors in the past. Death will not be peaceful. Not here. Not tonight. It will be violent and bloody. She _will_ destroy her enemies. She _will_ make Wan Shi Tong pay.

Because between her own will and the will of Fate, there is no contest.

She extends her arms out for one long, long moment, and she stretches and loosens her muscles, even as the colors chew through her skull. She feels her shoulders rotate, her thighs and calves heat up with blood. At the same time, she settles deep into mental preparedness, focusing perception, and strengthens within herself the instinctive, preconscious, _what-will-happen-in-the-next-half-second_ intuition that has always been the core of a warrior's skill in battle.

And then her first opponent appears onto the rooftop.

They all come one at a time, an endless stream, each former tribe member charging toward her in screaming agony.

And—

They are killed.

Before long, they have to scramble over the bodies of their dead comrades, a pile of bodies, a rampart of corpses, just to reach her. She builds a wall of the dead around her, and glorifies in the music of death's symphony. The clank of dropped weapons, the snap of larynx being crushed beneath fist, the whirlwind rush of air as she somersaults over the heads of two tribesmen lunging side by side, their rigid collapse as her feet flash out to connect twin heels against the napes of their necks to paralyze them—

All are musical notes. Even the damage she takes has sound. The cold flame of knives slicing through her skin have a distinctly high pitch, while the spearhead that plunges into her belly produces a deep contrabass roar. She does not care. They are merely flicks of melody.

She does not focus on the sequence of her own death. Really, conscious thought had vanished as soon as the colors had swarmed her, along with fear, and doubt. Standing atop the monastery, bathing herself in blood, Azula realizes that this, right here, right now, is a fantastic way to die.

She could see it; the day of her birth set her feet upon this path. Every triumph and tragedy, every foolish stunt and cruel strategy, each random torturous twist of fate had built a pressure within her, piled up in a tidal surge behind the dams of her self control. Those dams had been built by her father, by her every Firebending lesson, by her continual strive for perfection.

Azula had tried so hard, had tried for so _long_ to be what a perfect warrior was supposed to be, tried to control her desire to show off, her lust for glory, tried to be a loyal daughter, a beautiful Princess, a strong ruler, a perfect person…

But here, atop the monastery, she finds the end of _trying_.

There is no longer any reason to kid herself. Losing her iron control and giving in to her lust and desire is not only allowable—it is _vital_.

To make Wan Shi Tong suffer, it is not enough to simply wound her opponents. It is not enough to be calm, or cold, or disciplined.

To win this battle, she must slaughter. Not only that, but slaughter effortlessly, carelessly, laughingly, joyfully. To win this battle she has to dance and whirl and leap and spin, calling out for more opponents, more _victims_. She must make them all fear her.

She must make Wan Shi Tong think that maybe his plan wasn't so smart after all.

She wields no weapons, can bend no flame, but now she is the fire, and it is others who are incinerated. Violence courses through her. She breathes it like a dragon. Slipping off the years of control, throwing away conscious thought and worry, answering only the surge of her passion and joy, she finds power undreamed of.

She has _become_ battle incarnate.

She is not directly aware of the corpses that litter the battleground. Her feet nimbly avoid them on their own accord. Has she killed a dozen? A hundred? How many have crawled to the sidelines after their joints have been shattered? How many has she flung off the roof to die smashed on the ground? How many lie bleeding in the moonlight?

She doesn't know. There is no memory. There is no past.

There is no future.

There is no longer any such thing as a Fire Princess, or a Knowledge Spirit. There are no more citizens of the Earth Kingdom, or members of the Water Tribe. There are only the dancers of death, and the symphony they whirl to.

And abruptly, the music falters, stumbles, begins to limp.

There is only one dancer on the floor.

Azula sways, dying, dizzy from lack of blood, bleeding from scores of wounds. Her blood paints the rooftop beneath her bare feet, mingling with the red sea she has poured. There is no one left to fight. Only her muscle memory holds her up.

A whisper of feathers claps softly above her, and she can see what makes this sound, what produces this mockery of applause: an owl huge and bright, floating high above, soaring gently downward. An emperor descending to the gladiator pits to converse with the only survivor of a murderous orgy. His eyes are glittering black gemstones. His talons shimmer, and his sharp beak gleams in the moonlight.

_It had to happen,_ Azula thinks to herself. _Sooner or later, I would die because of him._

This is about to be over—not only is she bleeding out, but she cannot possibly face such a beast with nothing but her bare skin.

The great owl lands, enormous, regal, splayed claws flattening corpses heedlessly. "You killed them all."

"And they all killed me." Azula grits her blood-lined teeth in a feral mockery of a smile. "Looks like someone's going to have to start from scratch."

"Do you think I would let you die now?"

She shrugs, and sinks to one knee. "Forgive me if I deny the illusion of hope. I'm done with your game."

"This has never been just a _game_, child."

"Right."

"I tell you nothing but the truth." He sounds so _sincere_. So honest, like a kindly old uncle. "You think I play a game of enjoyment, for pleasure? There is nothing that you have done that has _not_ been a part of my game—but it is a _serious_ game, a permanent game, to be sure. A lethal game, one so grave that it can only be played with joyous abandon."

_When will I lose consciousness? When will I find peace from him?_

"An abandon that you showed just moments ago."

A cloud drifts in over the moon, and darkness floods the rooftop. Or is it merely death approaching?

"Show me more," he says. All she can see are those glittering black eyes, those mirrors of his black soul. "Show me the power of your true self. Show me the strength that lies inside your dying corpse."

He continues to speak, but Azula cannot hear him. Her ears roar like a forest fire. She cannot understand. Will not understand. Has no need to understand.

A tidal wave of red surges through her, and washes away the world.

* * *

She did not swim in the red sea. She floated. The blood ocean ebbed, waves washing out, and she bobbed to the surface. The red tide drained from his head, and she woke up gasping on the floor.

Her hands hurt.

She looked at them, and the scent of scorched meat rose to her nostrils. She let her right hand fall to the chilly stone floor, wondering blankly that the sea of blood had somehow been evaporated, and instead there was only dry stone and dust…and there was stone _all around_ her, chunks of rock like rubble…

Answers were beyond her.

But her hands still hurt. She raised her left hand and frowned: the skin of her palms and fingers was blackened, cracked, charred, oozing thick dark blood. Whisps of smoke curled upward from the cracks.

_Oh._ She blinked. _That explains the smell_.

"How…how does it feel, child…"

The voice was low, ragged and harsh, rasping, broken by coughs. The voice was familiar. The voice was the Spirit's.

"…to once more…bend your flame?"

He lay crumpled on the floor a few yards away, half-buried beneath stone and wooden beams—an incomprehensibly powerful being, now crushed like a sparrow-hawk beneath a fallen tree branch. His feathers were stained with scorch marks and blood, smoldering, red embers climbing along torn crests.

And Azula remembered.

He had said something to her, and she had wanted to say something back, but hatred and weariness had hammered any hope of meaning from her brain. She remembered a long gathering breath…inhaling a world of hatred and rage…and channeling that whole galaxy of rage down her arms and hurling it at Wan Shi Tong.

She remembered watching him writhe in the ruby-colored arcs of her hatred; remembered the sizzle of her own hands burning as red lightning burst through them; remembered how the pain only fed her anger.

And she remembered how _good_ it had felt.

Clean.

Pure.

No more wrestling with right and wrong, good and evil, philosophy or morals. Every knotty problem of ethics had dissolved in one brain-blasting surge; once she had surrendered complexity, _everything_ was simple. Her hatred became the only law in the universe. It had _meaning_, and the only answer to hatred was pain. Someone else's pain.

_His_ pain.

Even now, awake, alert, choking on dust and reeling, she could feel the sweet echo of that clean, pure rage. She could hear it calling to her, coiled inside of her, whispering ecstasies and pleasure beyond her wildest dreams.

_What have I become?_

Wan Shi Tong lay beneath the rubble like a broken doll; his eyes were dull now, glazed, empty, and his crest showed no movement. It had been so easy to hurt him. So _simple_. She was supposed to become better due to him, but now? She had fallen so _far_, so _easily_, into something even more monstrous than before.

"You—" she murmured. "You did this to me. You caused me to—"

"Don't…make excuses…"

The monastery roof had collapsed, that she remembered. There had been such wild joy as the power of her lightning storm had roared through her and became a mad assault on everything he was, everything he had built.

"…you were so beautiful…this way…"

She shook her head, eyes forming tears that would soon overflow. "You actually made me into more of a bad person than even _I_ could have done on my own," she whispered.

"Good and bad…" Wan Shi Tong seemed to draw strength from her despair, slowly managing to draw fuller breaths. "Those are no more than nomenclature, words that describe how little you understand about yourself. What you call _monstrous_ is the raw, unrestrained Azula. You call _evil_ what you find when you give yourself over completely to your passion. To be a 'good person,' that is to control your passion…but that kind of control limits your power. Greatness—true greatness of any kind—requires the _surrender_ of that mindset. Passion should be _guided_, not walled away and limited."

She simply lay there. Her life's spark began to fade into ash.

"You abandoned your limitations. You have truly grown up."

She couldn't see anymore.

"If your surrender of limitation leads to slaughter, that is not because your lessons have destructive motives. It is because _you_ do."

_Me?_

"The only death _you_ need fear, daughter of flame, is death by your own hand."

And in the blackness, she found that it looked exactly like Wan Shi Tong's eyes…so deep and glossy that she could see her own reflection in the darkness…

Distorted. Leering. An illusion of beauty and perfection, floating above and abyss of infinite black.

_Goodbye,_ she thought. To him? To the world? To her reflection?

She didn't know.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note: Okay, folks, I'm re-posting this chapter. I wasn't satisfied with how it turned out originally—it felt too much like a filler chapter, and left too many readers confused—so I took the time to expand some things a little. I hate leaving readers confused. It irks me.**

**I originally wanted to treat this fic like it was a novel of sorts, with none of these Author's Notes or answering questions that you guys ask in the comments, at least not during the middle of the story. But then I realized that I'm NOT writing a book, I'm writing a fic, and it should be treated like one. So I'll take a leaf out of Wan Shi Tong's educational handbook and do something that I normally wouldn't do, hopefully in the off chance that it will make my work a little better.**

**First, to answer a few questions: rest easy, Meneldur, this isn't a ripoff of Harry Potter, and Wan Shi Tong is most definitely **_**not**_** Dumbledore. The Knowledge Spirit is way too devious and manipulative. Thanks again for the AWESOMELY constructive review and subsequent messages, btw. Hopefully this chapter doesn't have the feeling of being a "connector" so much this time.**

**Attila 1987:Yes, part of the Sokka/Suki scenes this chapter is to show how much our Good Guys have grown…but ultimately it sets up THE major plot of the next story I plan to write (which will remain untitled for now). And yes, this story right now is merely the first book in what I'm calling my Fire Lord Trilogy. There will be two more stories after this one…and while Azula will be a major player in them both, they won't necessarily be about **_**her**_** anymore. And to answer the question regarding exactly how much time Azula spent trapped in the cave, being tortured: (singsong voice) **_**I'm not gonna tell youuu…**_

**(Writers love doing that. It's like heroin.)**

**But seriously, time moves in mysterious ways in the Spirit World. Could be she spent millennia tied down and tortured, could be she spent ten minutes. Some mysteries require decisions, rather than solutions.**

**Whitegoldendust: You're very observant, regarding certain plot points. (of course I'm not gonna tell you **_**which**_**; you'll just have to wait and see). And to ease your mind a little, yes, there is in fact a specific way that Ozai found out that Azula died. You're not gonna find out how for quite a while, though.**

**As for the rest of you guys out there, thank you so much for your reviews and private messages. Reviews are like orgasm after a week of foreplay—thanks for the multiples.**

**And now, back to the story! If you read the last version of this chapter, you can scroll down to where you last left off. I hope you like the two new scenes, and hopefully they won't leave you as confused as before…just craving more.**

* * *

In the outskirts of the Earth Kingdom ghost town of Shui Po Se, a large camp of new Kyoshi warriors readied themselves for battle.

Away from the camp—away from the noise, the chatter, the clank of prepared weapons and the scrape of whetstones on blades—Sokka knelt in the ground. Before him, on a wooden plank only he knew as an altar, lay a tightly bound leather pouch, small wooden container holding two bricks of dried clay, and a penguin-bone knife. He used the tiny blade to open a slash in the heel of his right palm, spilling ten drops into the container of clay.

Above him, the moonlight shone full and a wolf howled. Eerie, especially for a land that was wolf-free.

He ground the two bricks together, mixing his lifeblood with the flesh of the Mother Earth until they softened and combined into a paste. He gathered a handful and lifted it towards the gleaming, silver moon.

_Mother Earth,_ he thought, _my blood and your flesh, we combine. I am your mountain, the proof of strength. I am your stone, and I endure._

As he spoke, it became true. This was known as the Joining of the Earth, the first part of the ritual by which a non-bending member of the Water Tribe prepares himself for war.

Sokka then opened the small leather pouch and poured out a fine powder into his open left hand. It was a powder that comes from boiling a collection of sea salt and predator bones. He'd carried this powder for a year now, ever since his last visit home to the Southern Water Tribe. And it glowed like starlight, clear and vivid even under the pale light of the moon. When he judged that he held exactly the right amount, he shook it gently over the moist clay, and kneaded it until the clay darkened, turning the color of a threatening sky.

Slowly, with the reverence one only can find during ritual ceremony, Sokka took dollops of clay onto both hands and coated his face until he wore a gray mask.

_On my brow, your thunder, to make my enemy tremble. In my eyes, your lightning, to strike down my enemy forever._

As he spoke, it became true. This was the Joining of the Sky, the second part of the ritual by which a non-bending member of the Water Tribe prepares himself for war.

He then stripped off the long sleeved tunic he wore and set it aside. The night air was chilly by Earth Kingdom standards—to Sokka, it barely registered. Clad only in leggings, leather boots, and weapons belt, he began to paint himself with the clay, lightning forks out from the center of his torso and waves across his abdomen.

_My chest is your ocean, struck but never injured. My legs are your storm, swift and inescapable. _

This was the Joining of the Sea, the third and final part of the ritual by which a non-bending member of the Water Tribe prepares himself for war.

_The Earth does not tire, the Sky does not clear, the Sea does not rest, until the battle is done._

Sokka stood, and took the hilt of his sword in his clenched teeth while binding his hair into its wolf tail; he would carry his weapon naked, never setting it down or putting it away, until the battle was over. He tucked the wooden plank of an altar under one arm and gripped his sword with his now-free hand, turning back to the Kyoshi camp so that he might put his things in a place of safekeeping.

"That's quite a ritual," Ty Lee said as he turned.

He hadn't known how long she was standing there, he didn't know how much she had seen, but Sokka didn't startle at all. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his new sword and faced her, his skull-painted face terrifying and emotionless.

Ty Lee wore clothing very different to that of her Kyoshi comrades. Though the young woman had extraordinary grace and agility, she became something of a hindrance when attempting to wield fans and blades, or wear constricting armor and long dresses. Instead she wore her familiar circus outfit, dyed green and black as symbolism of her allegiance, and her feet were clad in thin slippers made of cloth. The chill early morning air and the tightness of her leotard made it quite apparent that she wasn't wearing anything beneath the thin fabric.

Ridiculous clothing to wear into a war, yes.

But then again, Ty Lee was a ridiculously skilled warrior. She didn't even carry weapons.

She said, "You know, I'd really feel better—more comfortable—if you'd put on some protection before you went in there. You're strong, but you're also slow, and arrows are fast. So get a breastplate or something. You need armor."

"Armor?" Sokka said. The serene consciousness of the Warrior's Mind drew his lips into a tiny smile that a wolf would recognize. "I'm not even gonna put on my shirt."

* * *

An unnamed prisoner lurched upright in bed, gasping, staring blindly into the darkness of his empty cell.

How she had _screamed_—how she had fought so beautifully, how her strength had failed on that stone rooftop, how at last she could only whisper her good-byes, her regrets—it all thundered in his head, blinding him to the alert stares of the three guards standing watch outside his bars, deafening him to their questions of _Are you all right?_

Of course he wasn't. He hadn't been all right since his son had stolen his throne.

One shaking hand pressed itself over the stampeding beat of his heart. Breaths were sucked in with short, shallow gasps.

"My daughter…"

_It could not be. It could NOT be true. It was impossible…_

"My_…daughter…"_

It turned out that the prisoner who once held the title of Fire Lord actually could shed tears, after all.

He clenched every muscle, curling into a ball on his cot, whispering denials over and over again between the sobs.

* * *

A husband and wife strode easily through a ghost town, heading for the gigantic domed citadel that was the town center. They both wore paint over their faces, and held hands the way that lovers often do, but the similarities ended there. The woman was dressed from head to toe in flowing robes the color of a spring forest. Though she carried a varied assortment of weapons on her, none were visible.

The man, by contrast, seemed nearly barbaric. Bare-chested, broadsword unsheathed and ready to swing, it would be a brave soul that could look upon him and stand in his way. No one did.

Though both husband and wife knew that there were plenty of eyes already watching them in this supposedly "empty" town. This town was empty only of innocents. Instead, it was populated by mercenaries who favored the coward's tactic of killing from a safe distance. Dishonorable. But effective. Such was the way of a Yu Yan Archer.

"You _do_ know that they've got eyes on us, right?" Suki asked softly, her voice nonchalant. "We're walking right into a trap."

"And since when have we ever walked _away_ from traps?"

"I'm just saying, there has to be a better way to spring it. We could send Ty Lee?"

Sokka didn't realize he was scoffing until the breath had already left his mouth. "She'd get killed in two seconds flat."

"Or get a date. Honestly, that leotard she insists on wearing—?"

"Hon. I'm wearing tight pants right now. Try not to get me thinking about her outfit, okay? I don't need the head honcho of our enemy assassin league to think I'm overly excited to see him."

By now they had reached the front doorway, a towering double-door entrance that was wide open and unguarded. Deep within the shadows that gathered in the interior Great Hall stood a cluster of five figures. Their faces were identical, set grim and hard. Their quivers were full, and bows hung loosely in five separate left hands.

They looked like they might be, just possibly, waiting for the duo.

Sokka walked into the building with his wife without pause, concern, or urgency. The effects of his Warrior Mind ritual layered connection upon connection, and brought the entire setting to life within his brain: the hardwood floor beneath his feet, the meeting table between himself and the five archers, even the increased tempo of his wife's heartbeat as her personality went from playful banter to deadly seriousness.

And when his Warrior's Mind revealed to his consciousness the awareness of the structure of the Great Hall they had just walked into, he became aware, without surprise or concern, that the entire expanse of vaulted ceiling above his head was actually a storage bunker.

Filled with archers.

Which made him also aware—again, without surprise or concern—that he could very likely die here.

"Archer General Quan Xi," he spoke out to the group directly in front of him. "This may sound a bit clichéd, but here goes: we come in peace."

With a magician's skill, Suki produced an olive branch from one sleeve and held it above her head. Then she dropped it, smiling sweetly. "That being said, you're under arrest."

Four of the archers in front spread out in a shallow arc between the duo and one man with distinctive markings on his sleeve, identifying him as the leader of the remaining fragment of Yu Yan. The man stroked his thin beard with one hand and eyed the two with a hint of amusement.

"A warrior from Kyoshi Island, and a barbarian from the Water Tribe." His voice was soft, quiet, unaccustomed to much use. "Don't tell me, let me guess: this is the part where I'm supposed to tell my men to stand down and drop their weapons."

"It could be," Sokka said.

"Or it could be the part where we prove to you _why_ most of your army has already been captured and/or killed," finished Suki.

"I'll take option three." Quan Xi flicked a finger dismissively, and the four bodyguards moved into a half-moon figuration, drawing out arrows from quivers and pulling bowstrings taut. "That's the one where I allow my men to work off some frustration that so many Kyoshi warriors have placed on them over the past years. _All_ my men."

A snap of the fingers, and the archers hidden in the ceiling rafters came to life.

Each individual clapped a spark-rock onto the tinder of an oil-soaked arrowhead, a rising chorus of snapping and ignition plumes that thickened until Sokka was reminded of seashells tinkling in wave foam. Then they began to drop down from the ceiling, first one by one, then many at a time, landing in a downpour that shook the hardwood oak floorboards. Dozens, nearly a hundred of them, all hit the ground in a crouch and sprang to an at-ready firing stance. Just as many stayed attached to the overhead rafters, hanging upside down by hooks in their boots, flaming arrowheads trained so that Sokka and Suki now stood in the center of a dome of tiny fireballs ready to be launched.

"I'm sorry," Sokka coughed. "Were we not clear? There's not gonna be much of an option three."

The General shook his head. "Such children. Do you never tire of this pathetic banter with your enemies?"

"I rarely get tired at all. Just ask the missus."

"Foreplay, now?" Suki bumped him with the side of one hip, smiling flirtatiously. "Not in front of new company, sweetie."

"Hey, _you_ started it back out in the street, remember?"

"_Enough!"_ General Quan Xi did not like being ignored. "Lay down your weapons. I have _hundreds_ of men here, and they are the best shots in the world. You cannot possibly beat them all."

Sokka nodded. "Well, when you're right, you're right. There's honestly noway that I can stop _all_ your guys." He placed an arm around his wife and gave her a brief hug. "That's why I brought _this_ little hellion."

"You will die together, then. Unless my men wish to take your woman alive."

Suki's response to that was to reveal two long, unopened fans from both sleeves, and wait. She winked at Quan Xi.

"Fire."

An instant later, Sokka found himself in a storm of arrowfire as every archer in the building released his bowstring at once.

Letting go of intention, letting go of desire, watching his wife move her fans so quickly they became a domed airscreen that battered shafts in all directions, Sokka sprinted forward to do battle up close and personal. As he spun and whirled through the Great Hall's open space, many of the arrows being deflected by the flat span of his blade or missing him outright, he cut his way into the mob of renegade bowmen as smoothly as if they were no more than waves on a sunlit beach. His steady pace left behind a trail of severed forearms and shattered bows.

By the time he found himself within striking distance of the General, nearly a quarter of the archers in the building had become casualties by their own not-so-friendly fire.

"Keep _firing!"_ Quan Xi roared to the one surviving bodyguard that flanked him. "_Kill them!"_

Sokka took the bodyguard out of the picture with a precise flick that severed his bowstring, followed by a slap to the temple with the flat of his blade.

"General," he said with a politely bland smile. "Our offer still stands."

Bows and fans in the Hall fell silent; the two were so close to the General that Quan Xi was in the line of fire.

"Do you think that we'll actually _surrender_?" He whipped his own bow up and aimed, squinting into Sokka's left eye. "There are hundreds of us. You cannot defeat us all."

"We don't have to," Sokka grinned.

"This is _your_ last chance to surrender, Tribesman. These men are my disciples to the way of death. Lay down your blade, or I will coat the floor with your blood myself."

"That's not what the floor's about to be coated with," Suki said. "Didn't you notice the weather this morning?"

Thin eyes narrowed, and the once-motionless arrow began to tremble with the strain of holding back. "What?"

"Have a look outside," Suki gestured with one fan. "It's about to start raining girls.

Quan Xi said again, turning to look, _"What?"_

There was a series of _thumps_ from above, followed by an identical staccato burst of explosions, and the once-dark Great Hall was suddenly illuminated with blinding golden sunlight that poured, like sunbeams through a cloud, through dozens of holes in the ceiling, illuminating streams of ropes that dropped through those holes and trailed all the way to the floor.

Down these ropes, rappelling so fast they seemed to be falling, came endless streams of green-cloaked young women, each with one hand on a line break and the other filled with a deflecting fan. When the first wave of Kyoshi Warriors hit the deck, the next wave was right behind them.

Surviving archers opened up on the newcomers, as though grateful for something to shoot. One lucky shot managed to sever a line completely, causing the young woman to plummet feet-first to the floor and land with a sickening _thud_, but Sokka couldn't afford to pay it any mind. Suki had trained these girls herself. It would take a lot more than a fall from a ceiling to hurt one of them severely.

Quan Xi turned back to Sokka. He lowered his bow with an angry glare.

Sokka did not smile.

The General then reached behind his back and pulled out a long, wickedly curving flay knife. "To the death, then."

Sokka clenched his jaw. "Not mine."

* * *

Zuko entered the building at a hurried walk, an aide at the front door rushing out to receive him. "Has he said anything else yet?"

"No, my Lord." The aide was of average height and had the build of someone who sat at a desk all day, hunched over scrolls and paper documents. "Just the requests to see you."

"His emotional state," Zuko pressed. "You're absolutely sure? He's actually…?"

"Weeping, my Lord, yes." The aide nodded as he led Zuko deeper into the building. "I've had three different counselors examine him for the past four hours. Their decisions are identical: he's grieving. In _mourning_, one would imagine, though we've made certain that there's no way news of anyone's death could reach him."

Zuko's lips pressed together, hard. "The two guards that were watching him. Have they been placed under confinement? He could have bribed one of them off somehow, gotten them to send him news of current events."

"Nearly impossible," the aide said. "One of them is Dou Faa, a man whom the former Fire Lord once banished, along with the rest of his family. There is no camaraderie in such a relationship between them."

"And the other guard?"

They finally made it to their destination, an unmarked door with three locks and a heavy wooden beam. "The other guard…" the aide paused, looking up at his Fire Lord with eyes that begged him to understand. "The other guard is my son. And, forgive me, my Lord, but I know my boy. He would never work to help this tyrant."

Zuko stared hard at the man. Then he nodded, once. "Open the door."

The aide breathed a sigh of relief, and set about removing the barriers. "He's been in there for six hours, now. No one has talked to him."

"Leave me alone with him. Lock the door behind me, and wait for my knock."

The aide nodded, lifted the heavy beam aside, and opened the door.

The smell of sweat and unwashed prisoner greeted Zuko like a blast of steam to the face. The interior was dark, no windows or candles to provide illumination. Fire was forbidden around the prisoner.

Zuko waited for the door to close behind him before igniting his own right hand, throwing the room into a soft glow.

The prisoner himself was seated behind a long stretch of hardwood table. Both hands were bound to a wooden chair's armrests, and both ankles were securely manacled to the chair's legs. His body sat hunched over, dejected, his tangled black hair acting as a curtain to hide his face.

"Father."

The prisoner raised his head slowly, as if waking from a heavy sleep. When enough of his hair parted to reveal the prisoner's face, Zuko's one good eye widened. The man had been crying. Was _still_ crying. Even now hos eyes were red, shot through with blood, glistening in the firelight with unshed tears.

"My…son…" he rasped.

"What happened, Father?"

The man's lips parted to show clenched teeth, set into a snarl. "Your fondest wish has come true. _That_ is what happened."

Zuko waited. Even now, apparently, the old man still couldn't help but play mind games.

"I have…_glorious_ news for you, my _Lord_." The prisoner's chest began to heave with angry, heavy breaths. "It would seem that I am the messenger that will tell you that your most hated enemy, the cause of so many sleepless nights, is now no longer a concern of yours."

"Azula." Zuko gave a tiny start, a fraction of widening in his good eye. "You know something about Azula."

"I know the _result_ of Azula," he all but spat. "The result comes in the form of good news, and bad news, I'm afraid."

"Don't try to be cute, Father. It doesn't go well with your age." Zuko stepped forward, drawing a chair and sitting down at the opposite end of the long table. "What's going on with my sister?"

"That's the _good_ news, oh gracious Fire Lord," he sneered. "You'll be jubilant to know that your sister… my_ daughter—"_ And here the prisoner had to stop, clenching his teeth once again to regain composure. "She is dead."

"Dead?" For a brief second, the flames in Zuko's palm withered, nearly going out. He caught himself just in time, and increased their illumination before asking, "How did you find this out?"

"You'll recall that, some time back, I offered to assist you in meeting your sister one last time? During one of our nightly walks? You turned down the offer, of course, presuming that I was lying. I was not. Azula and I have always shared a…_special_ bond. A bond you would never understand."

"I understand it well enough." Zuko's scar tingled with remembered agony. "She's practically you in female form."

"She _was_." The prisoner stared hard into the Fire Lord's eye, throwing heat and blame across the table. "That bond is now severed, Zuko. She is dead."

Zuko said nothing.

"That's the good news." The prisoner breathed in a slow, calming breath, and then asked politely, "Would you like to hear the bad?"

"I don't need to." Zuko stood up, his chair scraping the stone floor. "Just answer this: Do you know where I can find her body?"

"No."

"Do you have any proof? Any evidence that what you're saying isn't a lie?"

"Only my word."

"And we all know how much that is worth." Zuko shook his head. "Father. I don't know if you've gone insane after all these years, or if you're just trying to trick me. But it doesn't matter. Until I see Azula's body in front of me, she'll _always_ be alive. And I'll always be ready to finish our Agni Kai."

"No. Not always." The prisoner smiled, and Zuko could see firelight dancing on yellow teeth. "That's the bad news."

"What are you talking about?"

"This is a pretty good place to hold interrogations," he said, glancing around at the surroundings. "No fire, no windows. Nothing loose for a prisoner to pick up and use as a weapon. Even this chair I'm sitting on has been bolted to the floor." His eyes returned to the Fire Lord's, and Zuko found the promise of hell in his father's gaze. "Unfortunately, our table here isn't quite so restrained."

"What are you—?" Zuko began again.

The prisoner slammed his own forehead down onto the edge of the table with all the force of a meteor impact. The blow was so heavy that it caused the entire table to topple, _lengthwise_; the prisoner's end was forced downward, while the opposite end shot up, hitting the Fire Lord's chin at exactly the right angle to shoot the younger man skyward.

For a few moments, Fire Lord Zuko could see nothing but dizzying swirls and explosions of color in front of his eyes. In the back of his mind, he knew that he had to get up, had to survive, had to keep fighting. By instinct, he punched both hands forward, flame shooting out from each fingertip and landing on the now-splintering table, igniting it and illuminating the entire room once more.

There was the sound of shattering wood, and chain links being dragged across a stone floor.

_Get it together!_

Fire Lord Zuko stood up, planted both feet, and raised his fists in a Dragon's Claw ready stance.

Standing five feet away from him was the man once known as Fire Lord Ozai. In either hand he held a pair of long wooden splinters—makeshift stakes—and his legs and ankles were free, the chained manacles no longer attached to the chair he had ripped apart moments ago.

Ozai tightened his grip on both makeshift weapons. "I had hoped she would come back for me someday," he muttered softly. "I should have known better. Now, I'm upholding the family tradition of escaping from prison."

"You're not going anywhere, Father." Anger and resolve fueled the fire that blossomed onto Zuko's clenched fists. "That particular family tradition ends with you."

"Goodbye, son. You should know that you _did_ amuse me sometimes," Ozai said, and leapt.

Zuko shot forward to meet him.

The fireblast that engulfed the room echoed their fury.

* * *

Desire.

Desire could conquer all. It conquers pain. It conquers failure.

And sometimes it even conquers death.

For Azula, death was something of a surprise. There was no dark tunnel with light at the far end. No shaft of deific, heavenly energy descending from the clouds to lift her skyward. No chasm opening up beneath her corpse to send her, plummeting, screaming, below.

Desire was what caused Azula to awake, blink several times, and find herself in a jungle.

A very big, very dense jungle.

Insects buzzed nearby, invisible, screened by gently waving ferns and low hanging vines. The scent of fruits and various hybrids of chlorophyll sent trace aromas into her nose. Dead leaves and garlands of flowers, blooming with yellow, orange, and violet brilliance, carpeted the floor that she lay on. The far distance echoed with a long, mournful pack hunter's call. Somewhere above in the canopy, a bird lifted its voice in a song.

Beyond the ferns, directly in front of her, she found a tall cliff stretching up two, perhaps three times her height, thickly carpeted in vines and mosses. There were portions of the cliff wall that weren't entirely covered by vegetation, though, and as she peered closer, studying it, she soon could not mistake what stone the cliff was made of.

Stone brick.

This wasn't a cliff. It was a wall. A building.

"Oh…"

She sat up. There was no pain.

Actually, there was hardly any sensation at all. She felt…unbelievably _light_. Nearly weightless. Cautiously, she shifted both legs underneath her form and stood up—there was no need to adjust for balance or dizzying vertigo, even though a part of her mind whispered that there _should_ have been. After all, she had woken up in a strange place after a deep sleep, after…

After she had died.

She looked at her skin, expecting to see dried blood and open wounds. Instead she saw white, pale arms. More surprisingly, she could see _through_ those arms and observe the ground below. Her body was translucent. When she took a step forward, there was no sign of flowers being touched by anything, or the crunch of dead leaves when she placed that foot down.

"Oh…no…"

That was when the knowledge really, fully hit her. She was dead.

She had _died_.

The monastery, the cave, Grey Rock, The Fire Nation, Fire Lord Ozai…

_Father_…

They were all gone. Behind.

And she had no idea what was going to happen next.

The jungle seemed to come alive, swirling around her, spinning in a mute tornado. Her legs trembled slightly, and she knelt down onto the jungle floor, the only place where she could go. Down. Into the earth. Like a corpse, buried.

"Incredible, isn't it? Your body is dead, but you still go on."

Wan Shi Tong's voice came from just behind her shoulder; though she hadn't heard him approach, she was too lost in her mind to be startled. She had known, somehow, that he would already be here. That he was always going to be a part of her life. Even unto death, and beyond it, she would never escape him, never be free of him.

She took a deep, cleansing breath, and stood up. Regained her composure. Turned to face him. "Where are we?"

"Between," he said simply. Like her own body, she could see right through him. It seemed a cruel joke that even as a ghost, even transparent, he could still hide so much from her.

When he didn't elaborate any further, she asked, "Between where?"

"Everything. Between places, between times, between worlds."

She glanced around at the environment, the vibrant colors and overabundance of nature and life everywhere. "This isn't what I expected from the afterlife."

"A wise expectation. This is not, what you would call, an afterlife."

The logic was hidden from Azula. "You said my body was dead. Ergo, afterlife. Shouldn't I be elsewhere?"

"Who says that you are completely dead? Perhaps you're merely having a near-death experience, your mind trapped in limbo, and your subconscious can only grant you this hallucination in order to preserve your sanity."

"Being _here_, with _you_?" She looked back at Wan Shi Tong, eyebrow raised. "My subconscious takes the form of my mother, and even _she_ isn't that sick. Tell me about where I am."

"This is a crossroads. You are between destinations." His eyes, still dark as endless night, gleamed with what could have been called mirth. "And I must say, you're looking much better than before."

The words did not flatter. "Amazing what dying can do for you," she muttered. "And I tried dieting and everything."

"This is no sarcastic jest," he intoned slowly. "Have you noticed the changes in your appearance? Have you taken time to find out how differently you feel?

She took a moment to close her eyes, noticing just how she felt, physically. It was unnoticeable at first, then strange, then frightening, then terrifying, and then—wonderful.

She felt new. Like when she was a little girl, filled with energy, needing to spend it doing something not just creative, but _enjoyable_. She looked over her body, finding it not just translucent anymore, but _perfect_. No scars on her knuckles, no callouses on foot or palm. Straight, ebony hair cascaded down her back in a perfect waterfall of shimmering locks. Her sense of smell and hearing were as good as they had ever been. The myriad of aches and pains that abounded in her skeletal and muscular system—the cost of rigorous firebending training mixed in with untold millennia of torture at the whims of the Knowledge Spirit—all were now gone, vanished.

She expanded on that logic and realized that she didn't actually feel all _that_ incredible. She was merely noticing the absence of an extensive catalogue of injuries and trauma.

_The disadvantages of my body are gone_. It made sense, since her body was gone along with them.

The pain had stopped.

Stopped forever.

It was a lot to take in.

* * *

_Fucking stuck…his skull is like a vise…_

Sokka couldn't help but be glad that Suki was distracted. He could've died of embarrassment for this.

Stepping onto the dead general's face—his heel squelching into Quan Chi's open eye—he grunted as both hands tried to pry the sword out of his skull. With the sphere of the general's head properly braced between the floor's rock and his own heel's hard place, a twisting wrench yanked the blade free.

"Oh, that does it," he muttered. "_Look_ at this!"

Right at the mess of brain and bone splinters, the blade took a thirty-degree bend.

"You spend half your life learning how to get a blade _into_ somebody's skull—why don't teachers show us how to take it _out_?" He looked around, hoping to see someone listening. Though the Kyoshi warriors were all finished with their respective badassery, not one of them was paying attention to his humor, instead tending to their wounded and securely capturing their enemy.

"Forget this, then." He dropped the useless weapon, pining for the days when he swung a blade made from meteorite ore. "Wouldn't happen with a space sword."

As soon as his blade hit the ground, the ritualistic effects of Warrior's Mind crashed out of his body like a springtime shower. A sudden bloom of pain below his ribs shot outward, buckling his knees.

_Oh…crap…_

Apparently there was an arrow sticking out of the lower part of his back.

He leaned on the wall like it was a crutch and felt with one hand. It didn't exactly hurt—the sensation was too vast, like an ocean. It was hard to tell just how bad the damage really was, but the flames seemed to be growing dimmer around his vision…the air became liquid…things didn't make sense anymore…

_Oh great…I'm going into shock…_

His mother had been a fantastic Waterbender, and Katara was one of the best healers on the planet. Healing ran in his family's bloodline. Unfortunately, Sokka had taken more after his father. Not that it would be impossible to combat shock and get himself the proper medical attention needed—he could handle this wound, he could survive…but he would have to regain self-control first…

_Shock, I am trained for. Breathe._

_And._

_Breathe. _

_And…yank that damn thing out._

A few seconds of focused concentration pumped his blood pressure high enough to swim the world back into focus. A wrenching yank of the shaft in his back fpulled the arrow free, and the red sea of pain that bloomed from the wound increased his stress hormones; adrenaline and endorphins made their presence known. The pain faded. Strength leaked back into his legs and arms. His head cleared a little.

Now he could deal with it.

He staggered towards his wife, one hand clamped over the ragged hole, pressing a Yu Yan headband on top of the puncture and holding it in place with an iron palm. Arrows didn't do much cosmetic damage when they went in straight, but they could tear you up a whole bunch if they went in deep enough. This one hadn't. He'd been lucky.

Suki was kneeling down by the prone form of one of her girls. As he got closer, vision still blurry, Sokka could eventually see that it wasn't a Kyoshi Warrior. It was a young woman in a green acrobat's leotard.

A rappel line, its coils severed by an arrowhead, lay beneath her.

Ty Lee's eyes were open, and they were alert, darting this way and that. She turned her head to look at Suki, grimacing a little while she talked. Sokka reached them both in time to hear her finish saying, "…so it got me thinking, what would an opossum-goat do in this situation?"

Suki laughed a little, but Sokka could still see the concern on her face. "Figures. You nearly fall to your death, into a deathtrap, so you play dead and don't die." She looked at Sokka, the worry and sheer jaw-dropping luck of Ty Lee's survival battling for control over her face. Even though Ty Lee wasn't _officially_ a Kyoshi Warrior—one had to be born on Kyoshi Island for that—Suki and the others treated her like an adopted sister-in-arms. Sometimes mentally unstable, but no family is complete without some eccentricity. "She must've fallen thirty feet."

"I've got a feeling she should be used to it by now," he said, kneeling close to the acrobat's head. "You _are_, after all, a circus girl. Carnies don't let things like dropping three stories get in the way of the daily grind."

Ty Lee smiled, then clenched her teeth. "Usually there's a net at the bottom. Just in case."

"Now where's the excitement in that?" he asked, placing one hand on her shoulder. "We don't have a Waterbender on hand, so try not to move around too much for a while. I'm heading back to camp with the rest of the wounded for a patch-up, and then I'm coming back with a stretcher for you. So stay put. I don't want to hear that you've been walking around when I get back."

Normally, when Sokka acted like a big brother to her, Ty Lee would respond with some kind of innocent-yet-flirtatious remark. Playful banter. Now though, Sokka was taken aback when the young woman's eyes instead welled up with tears, then overflowed, trailing down either side of her face as she choked out a pain-wracked gasp.

"I—I don't think that's going to be a p-problem," she whispered.

Sokka looked from her to Suki, and then back again. "Ty Lee?"

"I…oh, guys_…_I—I…"

The acrobat turned her head to look at him squarely, and in her eyes Sokka could see fear and terror threatening to consume her, burn her alive.

"I…can't move my legs."

* * *

Wherever Azula was, the sun did not set there. She hadn't moved from her spot. She hadn't gone exploring. For the longest time, she merely sat, and thought. Not that she didn't want to explore. The jungle was beautiful, and who knew what else could be discovered beyond the building wall she faced? Who knew what kind of nightlife the jungle would have if the "sun" ever actually went down? This was a place untouched by human hand. Pristine and pure.

She hated it.

She wanted to burn the forest to the ground.

Even attempting to Firebend was a waste. When flame refused to blossom from her palm, reminding her of the loss of her body and its abilities, it was enough to make her simmer with rage.

She knew that somewhere deep within her heart, none of her education under Wan Shi Tong had ever seemed quite "real". She'd been nursing a secret certainty—concealed even from herself—that somehow she could have gotten everything back to the way it once was. That her father's defeat had been some kind of mistake. That she herself could never have fallen to a peasant Waterbender's tricks. That her brother was still weaker than she. That her allies would always show up in time—her army, her people, Mai and Ty Lee—and they would win the day and everyone could have a laugh together at how incredible the adventure was…

That was why she hated the place she was in.

Because she knew that she could never go home again.

She had gone to Wan Shi Tong in order to seek refuge, knowledge, even power if she was lucky enough to find it along the way…never realizing that she had been seeking power all along, seeking a do-over in the Pai-Sho game of her life. She would never be able to go back to the magnificent girl she had once been.

She remembered that girl. The dangerously beautiful girl who grew into adolescence surrounded by the opulence and splendor of royalty. The girl with a mind sharper than any blade, who could not only devise military strategies genius enough to bring down the impenetrable Ba Sing Se, but allowed her to always know _just what_ to say in any conversation. The Firebending princess who relentlessly drilled herself towards perfection, and never stopped until she achieved it—until she _proved_ to the naysayers that perfection _was_ possible, that she had achieved it in one area, and she would continue to do so in _all_ areas.

_I spent so much time trying to evolve. Trying to advance to the next level. Trying to act like the evolutionary superior of everyone around me._

_And now all I want is to be a little girl again. Just for a little while. Just for a day._

She looked at her ghostly hand.

_Just long enough to feel my own skin again._

She reflected bitterly that a large part of growing up seemed to involve watching everything around her change, not realizing that all changes were permanent—that nothing could change _back_.

Brooding, she sat.

Some long, unidentifiable time later, she asked out loud, "What's the next step?"

Wan Shi Tong answered from behind her, "I was beginning to wonder exactly that."

She nodded. That kind of answer was expected, from him. "You still don't know what it means to answer a question with an actual _answer_."

"Perhaps. Though perhaps it is you who cannot realize when a question is being asked."

Azula made an irritated gesture with one hand. "I just want to know what my options are. I want to know what I should do. I want to know what you _want_ from me, what you expect me to _do_."

"You are free to do, or not do, whatever you wish. And I don't want anything from you, tiny disciple. I only want _for _you."

She looked over her shoulder. "You mean, it's up to me? I'm the one in charge now? Aren't you supposed to tell you _disciple_ what to do?"

"Is it what the teacher teaches that matters," he said, "or what the student does with their knowledge? You have always been _in charge_ of yourself. You have simply been doing what you believed others wanted you to do. You obeyed your father's every whim and wish. You followed me and stayed under my wing, continuing your education, just as I have desired you to do so. And now I desire you to make up your _own mind_. To form your_ own actions._"

Azula said nothing. But she could not continue to meet his gaze.

"I see the turmoil inside of you," the Knowledge Spirit said. "You feel empty. Alone. Frightened about your future, yet also ready to meet it, yes?"

She stared back at him. "And…?"

"That feeling you are experiencing," he said with a knowing gleam, "is called _freedom_. Go where you will. Do what you want. Be who you wish."

"Freedom?" She almost laughed at that. "Some freedom. Sure, I'm free—I just don't know where I am, or _what_ I am, or where I can go, or what I'll find when I get there. I mean, look at this!" She held out her left arm to him, then passed her right hand cleanly through the elbow joint without any noticeable discomfort or sensation. "Am I a ghost—?"

"One could say that."

"—is this some kind of purgatory—?"

"In a way."

"—and what the hell is with this wall, anyway?" She pointed at the vine-encrusted building in front of her. "How do you explain that? What's this thing supposed to _be_?"

"An end," he said simply.

"What kind of end? The end of my journey? Is heaven on the other side of that wall? Or is it hell?"

"Far from either, actually. I would think that you, of all my past students, would be delighted to see this particular building." Wan Shi Tong looked away from her and focused his eyes on the brick wall with something akin to an expression of pride. "It has, after all, been the end destination that you have been seeking."

Azula blinked, then directed her attention into laser focus onto the wall. "You mean to say," she said slowly, "that this…this right here…is the outside of your Library?"

He raised one giant wing and brushed the surface of the wall the way a proud father would stroke the face of his children. "You can say that. This building is more to me than simply a place to store writings. It is my purpose. But yes, you may call it my Library if you wish."

She felt frightened to ask her next question. She swallowed, then asked, tentatively, "May I go inside? Can I…learn from your books?"

"You are free to do whatever you will."

She paused, cautious. "And what will _you_ do?"

His eyes seemed to smile at that. "Whatever I will."

Azula didn't make any advancement towards the building. She realized, standing there with Wan Shi Tong motionless by her side, that this "entranceway" towards the Library was in its own way kind of like being back at the cave, consumed by the torture of the colors. She could stand here until she went insane—though her body was gone, her mind still worked much as it always had—or she could _do_ something.

But what would happen if she tried to go inside?

Every time she had made some kind of "progress" during her tutelage, she had found herself descending into a deeper level of hell. Chances were high that, what with her being dead and all, she might actually find herself inside the _literal_ hell of lore, trapped and unable to escape.

On the other hand, perhaps she would find exactly what she thought would be there. Perhaps it really was a storehouse of unlimited knowledge. And all she had to do was decide if Wan Shi Tong was trustworthy. She had to _know_.

But…perhaps that wasn't quite correct...

Azula found a blossom of insight growing within her mind. Trust him? There was no evidence, no proof, that he was trustworthy. There was all evidence to the contrary, in fact. Wan Shi Tong was deceptive, more fluid than water, less stable than sand. No reasonable person would trust his word.

But then again, trust wasn't a reasonable thing.

Trust was an act of faith. Perhaps he wanted Azula to learn and to grow, exactly what teachers were supposed to want. Perhaps he was using her as a sadistic plaything, reveling in her agony and all the myriad forms it could take. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

But it all came down to one decision. The same decision anyone had to make when dealing with someone they relied on. She could decide whether or not to trust him, and then act.

Azula walked silently on ghostly feet until she paused at the brick wall's face. She lifted one hand and pressed it against the vegetation covering the building, and felt nothing. Her palm disappeared into the building's face. Then her entire hand. Followed by her arm, all the way up to the elbow. There was no sensation of burning flames on the other side.

She pulled it out.

Wan Shi Tong watched her, unblinking.

"One last question," she said. "Perhaps this really is the Library of Wan Shi Tong. But what's beyond it? Say I don't go inside. Say I decide to turn around and start walking. What will I find out there, in the jungle?"

For the longest time, it appeared like the Knowledge Spirit wouldn't answer. He breathed in, looking from his disciple to the forest around him, and back again. "I am Wan Shi Tong, He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things. Yet even a Knowledge Spirit such as I cannot answer, for I do not know. What I _do_ know is, if the place you see around you can be known as Between, then the places you cannot see can only, logically, be labeled Beyond."

"Beyond." The word sounded flat on her tongue. "Not very descriptive."

"Yet it is the perfect description. To go Beyond is to leave everything you know. If you decide to turn away from my Library and enter the Beyond, that word will become so total, it will even begin to define yourself. At the very least, you will be beyond my reach, beyond my guidance, beyond my help."

So. There were in fact _two_ walls to either side of her, then. The wall of brick and stone, and a wall of vegetation that curtained mysteries that even Wan Shi Tong could not, _would_ not, solve. And both walls were actually disguises, concealing the fact that they were, actually, roads.

One road led to knowledge and power. One road led, simply, beyond.

Azula faced the Library wall one final time. She took a deep breath, as if readying herself for a plunge into an icy pool. Then she turned her face to Wan Shi Tong, and winked.

"Well," she said, and here she found herself smiling a dangerous, mischievous, child-Azula smile. "I didn't come all this way just to look at it. You coming?"

And with that, she pushed herself through the wall and disappeared.

She didn't get to hear Wan Shi Tong say to himself, "Of course. I was merely waiting for you to lead."


	9. Chapter 9

Inside the interrogation room, all was smoke, and fire, and rage.

The heavy wooden table and shattered chair that the prisoner had once sat on now burned like funeral pyres, collateral damage of the Fire Lord's instinctive reactions to his father's attack.

A roar that belonged more to a dragon than man clawed its way from Ozai's chest, and he sprinted _through_ the curtain of flame that his son had pushed towards him, hair curling with heat, flipping forward, not slowing down at all until he collided with Zuko's stomach feet-first and blasted him into the far wall, leaving the younger man swaying, half stunned.

Ozai rose from the floor and raised his wooden stakes for the kill. "The downside of your power," he said, "is your presumed superiority. You should have learned from my mistake. Good-bye, son."

The energy to Firebend comes from breathing. Zuko—the breath crushed from his chest, solar plexus spasming uncontrollably—had only enough air within him for one tiny move, a shot at victory that wouldn't work twice…

But he was a very good shot.

After all, once upon a time he had lit dozens of fountain-lanterns from fifty paces away.

Twin embers shot forth from both index fingers—tiny embers, balls of glowing fire that were barely the size of a fly—and struck the underside of Ozai's wrists. Clenched hands sprang open by reflex, and a prisoner's makeshift weapons tumbled.

Zuko gasped a breath and reached. The fire _behind_ Ozai—the burning table and chair—tendrils of their flames were sucked towards the Fire Lord's outstretched hands. The tumbling stakes were caught by the plumes, lifted up, and carried into Zuko's waiting hands.

The Fire Lord sucked his breath in fully, poised both weapons in front of him in a cross, and burnt them to cinders.

"The downside of your ego," Zuko returned, panting, a feral glint coming from behind his scarred eye, "is your presumption that anyone cares what you have to say, old man."

Ozai roared and flew at him again, using both his desperation and suicidal lack of hope to crash Zuko into the wall once more. His hands seized Zuko's wrists with impossible strength, forcing his arms wide, and he slammed his forehead into his son's face, breaking the nose.

Then again.

And once more for good measure.

"I am so _sick_ of your _mouth, _boy!"

Power born from hatred fed strength to his grip.

Zuko—dizzy, nose shattered, blinded by the stars in his eyes—nonetheless felt the bones of his elbows bending, beginning to feather towards the greenstick fractures that would soon become breaks.

_This is bad_, he thought.

With Ozai's grip on his wrists bending his arms near to breaking, Zuko realized a sudden and profound truth. This man was everything Zuko had devoted his life to avoid becoming. War-monger. Tyrant. Dishonored ruler. Phoenix King. And here, now, with this evidence blossoming before his eyes, despite the fact that this was his father, the man who was half responsible for giving him life…

Zuko realized that he hated him.

It was simple, and uncomplicated. Despite what Aang had said about killing—_There is always another way—_Zuko found that the friends and family he kept were the only things that had prevented him, all this time, from taking a sword to Ozai's neck and ridding the world of his father's plague forever. Zuko had never let himself admit those evil thoughts existed, even _to_ himself. He had argued against that dark part of him, made allowances for his father, fought to control the terrible thoughts again and again that whispered to him late at night when the palace quieted, _He'll try to kill you if you don't kill him first._ And he'd blinded himself for the past dozen-plus years, searching for his sister when the _real _threat was here all along.

And now the threat was loose, and in his face, and trying to kill him.

There was only one answer Zuko could find:

Kill him back.

* * *

_Killing someone is wrong._

_No matter the reason, you should never take the life of someone else, no matter how many problems it solves, no matter how badly you want to. There are plenty things in this world worth living for, and a precious few things worth dying for. But there is nothing in this world worth killing for._

_Yes, we were in war. Yes, people died every day, soldier and civilian alike. And yes, plenty of Avatars in the past have killed their enemies. Not all. But they all could have. Before the battle, I talked with many of them, and they each gave me the same form of advice: sometimes, for the good of the world, threats _to _the world had to be killed. Fire Lord Ozai certainly qualified._

_My people, the Air Nomads, have killed when they felt the need to. The Southern Air Temple is covered with the bodies of Fire Nation soldiers who underestimated Air Nomads as people who wouldn't fight back. I found Monk Gyatso's body surrounded by armored skeletons._

_But still, I would not do it. I _could_ not do it. Maybe it was the fact that I was only twelve, and the other Avatars had begun their training when they turned sixteen, when they had already begun walking the path of growing up; killing was for grownups, and I was definitely still a child. Maybe my blood didn't boil yet with the hate and fury that war so often ignites. Maybe it was my innocence, my childish naiveté, that forbid the belief that killing my enemy was a solution. _

_(Perhaps it's not so childish—I still hold that belief to this day.)_

_Many of my friends have since tried to convince me of the opposite logic. The ways they describe it sometimes vary, but the overall message is always the same: when someone is trying to kill you or yours, it's okay to kill them back. In war, it's even simpler: kill as many of the enemy as you can, because that's the only way to make peace and save the lives of countless others._

_If peace is gained by killing The Other Guy, then I don't want it._

_Instead, I searched to find another way._

_I didn't know how to do it. I didn't have any kind of strategy that would work. Beat the Fire Lord into submission, without throwing a killing blow? How? Looking back now, even when the Avatar State took over me and the tide of battle changed, Ozai survived every attack that was directed towards him. Every attack that was meant to KILL him._

_The only thing that saved his life was the fact that my conviction in what I believed was so strong, I forcibly left the Avatar State and faced him on my own. We were both weakened by that point, beaten, and we knew that everything was about to end._

_That's when I resorted to Energybending. _

_It's impossible to describe exactly what this form of bending really is—you cannot "learn" it; you can only really be shown, and the only way to understand it completely is to do it—but I'll try my best to explain. An Earthbender isn't restricted primarily to just rocks and dirt. All Earthbenders have the potential to bend sand, mud, gemstone, and even metal. Waterbenders can also bend ice, blood, sweat, and fog. Firebenders can ignite infernos from embers, turn their bodies into heaters that melt ice within seconds, and even produce lightning, a fire so cold it burns._

_All of these are some type of Energybending._

_I did not invent this style, or discover it. The knowledge of how to Energybend was given to me, like a gift. As I've already stated, you can't "learn" how to do it. It has to be passed on to you from someone who already understands it. _

_With Energybending, you bend the energy within yourself. Far from being an advanced form of bending, it's actually the foundation of all the bending arts—before we could bend the elements, we bent the energy within ourselves. We passed on knowledge—good energy—and took away that which did not serve us—bad energy—until we became so advanced that we could manipulate and control the energy outside of ourselves._

_And once we focused outside of ourselves, the knowledge for the energy within ourselves was forgotten. It took eons, I'm sure. But it happened. You could forget how to bend._

_I used this lost art, and I made Fire Lord Ozai forget how to bend his fire._

_For any Firebenders that read this, you will undoubtedly think me cruel. I have felt the effects of Sozin's Comet, and how it changed my perspective on the world—seeing my surroundings as nothing but potential tinder, fuel for beautiful, dancing flame—to have that taken away, forcibly, is akin to torture, like blinding a painter, or breaking the fingers of a musician. To make someone forget how to do the one thing they excel at is a terrible thing._

_Fire Lord Ozai was a terrible man._

_When I connected with him, my hands on his heart and forehead, I knew him. The battle of wills lasted perhaps a few seconds, but it felt like millennia, and in that time I was forced to see everything the Fire Lord was, everything he had done, everything he had always wanted to do, everything he had planned. I knew him to the bone. And I will never, ever forget what I learned._

_I won't allow myself._

_Just as I won't allow myself to ever Energybend again. _

_To successfully use Energybending and change another person, your own spirit has to be unbendable. Otherwise you will be corrupted and destroyed. Not that I would have died, had Ozai won; I simply would have been… 're-written', for lack of a better word. With Fire Lord Ozai as my author._

_I will never kill someone. And I will never allow someone to kill through me._

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of a gigantic library, Azula looked up from the autobiography in her lap, a tome titled _The Last Airbender,_ and smiled to herself.

Now she had her answer.

* * *

Orgies were great.

Toph sucked hard on a currently-ejaculating penis, pumped her clenched fingers around the shafts in either hand, and rode a thick, hard cock that was currently forced up her ass as far as it would go. Two men used their strong hands to massage her feet—their mouths occupied by licking and sucking on her toes—while another man wrapped both hands around Toph's neck and carefully asphyxiated her.

Lack of oxygen to the brain had a great side effect: it heightened every sensation, increased the pleasure in every touch, and provided a dreamy high for whoever was undergoing the dangerous technique.

For Toph—a person whose entire world was mostly made up of what she felt—achieving orgasm while having her body covered in sexual attention was like getting fucked by a lightning bolt.

_Being Chief Bei Fong, _she mused idly, _definitely has its perks._

The orgy of six men that covered her were all students of hers. After the War, word had quickly gotten out among the Earth Kingdom about the prodigious Earthbender who not only helped bring down the Fire Nation army, but was an EarthRumble champion, responsible for teaching the Avatar how to Earthbend, and had even unlocked the secrets of Metalbending.

Toph had used that gossip to her advantage, opening up her own school—distinguishable by the fact that it was made _entirely_ out of solid gleaming steel—and within a few years had added on an additional aspect to her reputation: Chief Bei Fong was completely batshit insane.

But in a good way.

Toph had started out as royalty. Aristocrats in any society all thrive on the secure knowledge that they make the rules. They do what they want. And if they can't immediately get what they want, they find a way. Such a mindset is very beneficial, when combined with knowledge and wisdom.

Toph had the additional advantage of being a little crafty.

Chief Bei Fong—the students were _ordered_ to address her as such, and woe to the class clown that disobeyed—was a renaissance woman, and a study in the balance of polarity. Everything she did, everything she was, it all combined to form a balance of extremes. She enjoyed sex and had a depraved mind, with perversions that would make Sokka blush—but she was also a virgin, and would never allow any man access to _that_ part of her. Not casually, anyway. She'd give her virginity to the man that _deserved_ it.

She drank, and partied hard, and slept late. She also worked hard and never slowed down, going well into the night. While some people would take tea breaks during the middle of the day, Toph would take an exercise break.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Chief Bei Fong was the fact that, even though she indulged in just about every available vice, she never allowed those indulgences to become habits. She never found herself sucked into the quagmire of addiction that so many others did. Addiction to orgasm could be just as damaging as pipe weed, so even though she had plenty of sex, the young woman had never once masturbated.

For those who were lucky enough to find themselves inside the Special Training Room—dark, with cushions everywhere and a special rock throne perfectly designed for the Chief to reach maximum orgasmic potential—they got there because they understood Chief Bei Fong's number one strength.

Self-control.

It was self-control that had allowed a little blind girl to learn how to see with Earthbending. It was self-control that enabled that little girl to become Earth Rumble champion year after year. It was self-control that made Earthbenders solid and immovable, patient and still, fearless in the face of an oncoming boulder, stronger than the foundations of the earth.

It was self-control that made Chief Bei Fong suddenly spit the cock out of her mouth, dismount, and halt the sex-crazed students with two sentences.

"Some friends just arrived. One of them is really hurt."

And it was self-control that allowed her to slip on her clothing without any fuss, while her boys clenched their jaws, tucked their dicks back into their trousers, and grumbled about bad timing.

Toph didn't care. As she pulled on her robe and tied a sash around her waist, she paid attention to the vibrations coming through the floor. Three people were at the front entrance to her school, with a caravan of a dozen or so others waiting by the front gate. One of them was lying down on something long and flat, like a pallet of wood or a tabletop. Every one of them had elevated heart rates that were borderline panic—a heart would beat differently when its owner was afraid, rather than just over-exerted.

Making her way quickly through the halls of her school, she identified Sokka as he pounded on the door and yelled. There was a woman who was pacing nervously—had to be Suki, then, because the two were inseperable—and the one person who was lying down didn't even bother moving. Who was that?

Toph flung the doors apart and pointed a stern finger at the Water Tribesman. "I was just getting fucked up the ass _real good_, Sokka, so this better be an emergency."

"It is." He sounded tired, and panting, like he'd run for miles. "Ty Lee's hurt bad. Do you have a healer? Because we really need one."

"Ty Lee?" Toph squatted down by the immobile figure. "What happened?"

"Fell from a rooftop," the acrobat answered. Her voice was small, and tiny, like she was scared but trying to be brave. "Lost the feeling in my legs. Sorry we interrupted—"

"Forget it, they'll be back next week." Toph reached a hand out and placed it on Ty Lee's head, frowning when she found a thick leather strap binding her head down. The circus woman had been strapped to the board like a piece of baggage. "Who the hell tied you up?" she asked.

"My idea," Suki answered. "It kept her from falling off while we traveled. We've just come from—"

"Don't bother, not important. Just cut her loose, wouldja?" Toph stomped one foot down, and the ground beneath Ty Lee swelled upwards, raising her up on a platform that reached to waist height. "Close your eyes, tumble girl."

Ty Lee asked, "Why?"

"Because there aren't any Waterbenders here, which means I'm your doctor, and I don't have much of a bedside manner, so when your doctor tells you to do something you do it." She placed both hands over where she could determine Ty Lee's eyes were, and muttered, "I'm going to see how bad the damage is. Trust me, okay?"

Ty Lee nodded.

"Eyes closed?"

"They are," she whispered.

"Tell me if you can feel this." She flicked the bottom of Ty Lee's right foot. It made a solid-sounding _thwack_ of impact.

"No. Nothing."

Sokka interrupted, "We've already done these kinds of tests—"

"Sokka, you interrupt me while I'm working," she scolded him, "and as soon as I'm done here I'll be using you as a demonstration for disciplinary action to scare my younger students. Now shut the hell up, I'm busy."

Sokka shut the hell up.

Holding out one hand to Suki, Toph asked, "Still carrying a knife?"

The wooden handle was immediately placed in Toph's palm. Suki was silent. She vibrated with anxious fear.

First using the knife to sever the leather straps that bound Ty Lee down, Toph next began cutting away at the bottom part of her uniform. "We're gonna start with all the naughty bits first," she announced. "Look away, children, and tell your perv parents to turn a blind eye."

Everyone was silent. The time for jokes was long past.

Toph used the tip of the knife to poke at Ty Lee's kneecap. "Anything?"

"No."

She trailed the knife's edge, scraping it's dull side against her outer thigh until she reached hip bone. "Anything?"

"There's pressure around my waist."

"Good, we're getting somewhere…how about now?"

"No. What're you touching?"

"Your clit."

"…Is that..." And here Ty Lee's voice was filled with a mixture of nervous laughter and angry fear. "That's a joke, right?"

"No." The answer was surgically precise and bordering on cold. "But don't worry. I won't be going in to test your G-spot, not until I bring out the candles and wine. How about this?"

Ty Lee twitched when the Earthbender's hand was placed on her navel. "My tummy."

Toph nodded, silent. She tapped the wooden board with a finger once, twice, three times, her other hand placed directly over the navel, pressing down. She stayed quiet.

Then she let out a quiet sigh, and another nod.

"Tell me." The woman sounded so much like a frightened circus girl trying to be brave that it even made Toph pause, deliberating on the correct course of action. "Just tell me. Please. How bad is it?"

"There's no easy way to say this," she said. "So I'll say it as simple as I can. Your back isn't broken, Ty Lee. It's shattered."

* * *

In the now silent, smoke-filled interrogation cell of a secret prison facility, a father and son looked at each other.

Only the son blinked.

The father would never blink again.

_I…did…this?_

The dead man's eyes were fixed on something far beyond the sight of the living. His lifeless body, a smoking hole burrowed into and out of the its chest, collapsed like a drifting snowflake, dropping to both knees and falling forward at the waist, as if bowing in submission to the power that had blasted away its life.

The son blinked again.

_What…am I?_

Was he the banished prince on an endless quest, navigating the world for a missing deity? Was he the legendary Firebender, the only person to have taken on Fire Princess Azula in a court Agni Kai and win? Was he the anger-prone nephew of the Dragon of the West? The war hero? The lover? The Fire Prince? The Fire Lord?

Could he be all of these things—could he be _any_ of them—and still do what he had just done?

He was already discovering the answer at the same time that he realized the question was even being asked.

"How did I—?"

Now he stood over the roasted corpse that he couldn't bear to see but he couldn't make himself look away, and he knew that it wasn't a dream, that he'd really _done_ this, the flames were still alight in his palms and the ocean of nightmares he'd dived into had closed over his head.

Now he was drowning.

The flames died, and his body went slack. He found himself leaning against the nearest wall, slumping down to the floor, still unable to look away from those lifeless eyes.

_I couldn't stop myself. He tried to kill me. It was self-defense._

Even before the thoughts were finished, he knew how hollow each lie was.

_He was my FATHER._

That, however—that terrible fact—_that_ was truth. Though it burned him like his own fire, truth was something that he could grasp, hold to himself. And it somehow made him feel…real again. He tried another truth, more painful, more terrible, more _real_:

"I killed you," he said, and his voice came out quiet, and calm, and final. Now he could look away. Look away from the evidence of what he now was, and look down at the hands that had ripped life from the man who had sired him. "I am a killer."

Guilt hit him like a lightning blast. He _felt_ it, a punch to his chest that crushed breath from his lungs and froze his heart. The guilt hung on his shoulders like a prisoner's chains, twenty tons of them, an invisible weight beyond his strength, crushing the life out of him.

"I'm a killer."

That was the sum of it.

His father had been killed.

By him.

On purpose.

Here in this prisoner's interrogation cell, he had looked into the eyes of a family member and decided to end that life. He could have chosen the right way. He could have chosen the Avatar's way. But instead…

There was pounding on the door to the cell, and shouts from the guards posted outside, asking if their Lord was all right, and barked orders amongst each other to _bring a healer and several other platoons IMMEDIATELY! _

He stared down at his father's corpse.

If things would just _stop_ for a while, an hour, a minute, then he could pull himself together and find some way to keep moving forward. He had to keep moving forward. Taking the next step forward was the only thing that he could do…now that he couldn't bear to look behind.

He could never unmake this choice. He could never take it back. As Fire Lord Ozai was once fond of saying, there were no second chances. Not in the Fire Nation. Not ever.

Zuko wasn't sure that he wanted one.

* * *

**This is what it is like to be Ty Lee, right now.**

**It hurts to not feel anything. The numbness is terrible, an aching pain of **_**lack**_**. You lie there on the healing table, bravery and hope being the only reasons why you have been able to stay strong for so long. Now, as you hear the announcement from Toph, Chief Bei Fong, the most talented non-Avatar Earthbender on the planet, the remaining years of your entire life are held in front of you and you cannot look away.**

**That one single word—**_**Shattered—**_**has taken you in your hardened shell of hope, and crushed you into sand.**

**Your body is now a prison.**

**Your sentence is life.**

**You know that, from the moment you wake every day, you will feel the pain of lack. Your heart will keep pumping blood, and your lungs will keep filling your body with oxygen, and you will eat whatever food and drink whatever water that your body demands to have in order to survive. Then you'll piss and shit it out. And that is all. That is all you can do.**

**That is all you will ever be.**

**Right now, your body is beautiful, and lithe, and it will all be gone very soon. Your ability to exercise every day is what kept you flexible and supple, kept you **_**young**_**, and now you know for certain that your body will start to age rapidly. Perhaps within the month you will show signs of fattening. The upcoming stress of adjusting to your new life will turn your brunette locks into steel grey. Your skin will sag. Your wrinkles will form. And very shortly you will become an old woman. An old woman with decades of life left ahead of her.**

**What were once endless possibilities are now gone. A future husband? Gone. Children, and family? Gone. What family you once had, you burned the bridge that led home long ago. Even sex is no longer an option. You can't feel it. Perhaps you'll find some pleasure acting as a series of holes for men to place their cocks.**

**You can hear yourself beginning to break down. The cries come hard, and harsh, and they scrape your throat raw, and even though you want to stop crying and put on a happy face like always, you can't this time. You'll probably never stop crying. You can't remember what happiness was supposed to look like.**

**You can't even remember how it felt.**

**And the sadness turns into anger, and you rage and scream and try to reach out to hurt the woman who has diagnosed you, hurt the husband and wife who led you into battle, hurt anyone at all so they can understand how you feel right now…but your hands and arms are still tied down. You cannot move. Movement was only a memory, and even though you strain against the bonds that hold you in place it is only your wrists and arms that get hurt as you thrash. In the end, you cannot touch the people who still have their perfect lives.**

**In the end, they are all you have left.**

**They are your friends, and they do their best to understand you, help you, forgive you for reacting this way…**

**And their wisdom in the face of your insanity reveals the truth to you.**

**This is all your fault.**

**Not Suki. Not Sokka. Not Toph Bei Fong, or Yu Yan Archers. Just you.**

**All you.**

**Only you.**

**Your fault.**

**You fell.**

**You fell from the rafters because you weren't fast enough with the fan to block the arrow that severed your line. You fell because you weren't a _real_ Kyoshi warrior, you were just a girl playing dress-up. You weren't fast enough, and you weren't good enough to land properly-you should've tumbled and rolled when you hit the ground, not simply lie there-you should've done something else, _anything _else, instead of what you had done...**

**And so it is that, surrounded by friends and comrades, you burn in your own shame and self-hatred. They will never leave you.**

**But still.**

**You have never felt so alone in your life.**

**This is what it is like to be Ty Lee.**

**Right now.**


	10. Chapter 10

Azula placed the last book back onto its shelf. Her hands became fists.

"I had a feeling it would come to this."

On the other side of the vast room—The Biology Wing, holding texts and scrolls detailing everything ever written and recorded about the human body—a great white owl asked, "A premonition that came true? Perhaps you should have employed such a talent before you set out on your journey to be my apprentice."

"Dark humor doesn't work for you," she muttered, eyes sweeping over the enormous room. Every shelf seemed to groan with the weight of books. Every table had been empty, then filled with books she'd studied, then emptied once again as they were put back on the shelf. In the corner of one room lay sheets of paper she'd written notes on—complex mathematical equations, possible combinations of _this_ ancient breathing technique mixed with _that_ focus of perception, religious texts written in dead languages that had taken her ages to translate and learn—so many notes, so much knowledge, she'd kept all of it on the floor. No tables could hold the weight.

And still she'd gotten nowhere.

She contemplated setting fire to the paper mountain out of pure spite, but wisdom kept her from making a mistake she might regret. She'd grown _that_ much, at least.

Her bare feet stomped into the tile floor as she made her way over to the Knowledge Spirit. Solid feet—there was magic inside the Library, some rule that Wan Shi Tong probably had control over, that turned her ghostly self into something that was, for all intents and purposes, a corporeal being. It wasn't like she was alive: her body was flesh, and it looked like it always did, and could use physical hands to turn the physical pages of books, or write notes with pen and paper, but the similarities ended there. There was no heart that needed to beat, no lungs that needed oxygen, no stomach that growled for food, no hair that grew, no body that wore down with fatigue and demanded sleep. She was a flesh doll that did not age. Or perhaps it was simply that time did not exist.

In the end, did the difference matter?

"I started with the books written by Avatar Aang and my brother," she said as she approached. Wan Shi Tong listened with an unblinking stare.

"I moved on to all of the books written by all of the Avatars. Those that bothered to write them, anyway." There had been a special hall reserved for those specific texts. Some had proven quite entertaining—the diary of Kyoshi had proven that even Avatars weren't devoid of filthy minds.

"Airbending scrolls were next. Maybe there was something that Airbenders understood about the bending arts that nobody else in the real world did." It had been a source of national disgrace for the Fire Nation that all Air Nomads could bend their element, while only a quarter of the people under the rule of Ozai could bend flame. Azula, like many Firebenders, had simply put this fact aside as a combination of genetics and the laziness of the Air Nomads—it took _real_ discipline to master flame, while anybody who could fart might as well be called an Airbender.

"Next came religious texts. All of them. Recent, and long dead." She'd been amazed at how they were all so alike, particularly in that the most powerful deity of all was constantly depicted as an old man with white hair and snowy beard. Just slap a new name on it and there you go, let's worship Zeus, Odin, Jupiter, Santa, etc.

"When that didn't give me the answers that I needed, I went to the opposite side of the playing field. If spirituality wouldn't turn up anything, maybe science would. I studied physics, mathematics, quantum energy, anatomy, physiology, athletics, evolutionary psychology, biology, and endocrinology. This spoke to me better, and I began to understand."

"Understand what?" The owl seemed genuinely interested. As he always did.

"Energy. What it really is. Not in a metaphysical sense, or spiritual woo-woo speak. The building blocks of it. How objects are really just atoms, and atoms vibrate with frequency, and this frequency shapes everything all around us. It took a very long time before I could actually believe this, but the math held up."

She stood in front of Wan Shi Tong and touched one hand to his crest, running her fingers through his feathers, while she knelt and placed her other hand on one of his talons. "Softness and hardness," she said, "is nothing more than a difference in how tightly packed atoms are, and how quickly they vibrate. The same goes with temperature—an atom in ice is practically motionless, while one in fire dances and whirls."

Wan Shi Tong did nothing.

Eventually, she removed herself from him, and looked up into his ebony eyes. "There's so much. So much that I've learned. I've come so close to understanding how to energybend. And now…"

Her jaw clenched, and her fists tightened to white-knuckled fury.

"And now there are no more books left."

"You've read them all?" he asked. There was nothing in his voice to indicate surprise.

"All of them. Even the ones that didn't come close to being part of my search. The answer isn't here! All I have are more clues, but they don't fit together and I can't understand them! I don't have _control!_" She turned her face back towards the stacks of paper and swiped a clawed hand at it in fury. Ruby lightning cascaded from her fingers and tore gouges into the stone walls and ceiling, shredding into bookcases, turning the mountain of painstaking effort and hope into nothing more than a funeral pyre for her dreams.

She whirled back to Wan Shi Tong. "I did not go through hell and back just to come up empty," she hissed through snarling teeth. "I need to know. How does bending work? Why can I bend fire and lightning—hell, even combine the two—but I can't airbend, or freeze water, or turn metal into sand like others can? What the hell makes the Avatar so different from us?"

For the longest time, Wan Shi Tong watched his Library burn from the inside out. Neither of them had any need to breathe, so the smoke caused no real irritation. Eventually he sighed and extended one wing, giving it a mighty flap.

The flames immediately died. The smoke purified itself into clean oxygen. The ash reformed itself into parchment and ink.

Azula stared. Another miracle she was unable to accomplish, and he had done it with the same motion most used to shoo a fly away.

"You've come here searching for what can't be found," he said. There was a sad, forlorn tone to his voice. "A Library such as mine holds every single written document throughout the history of your species. And still you search. Though you have taken many steps forward here, and gained knowledge of how the universe works, you continue to look for the next step."

It was the apprentice's turn to be silent.

Wan Shi Tong bowed his head to her. "If it has been written, you know it. But there is still so much that you don't know. That is why it is time for you to depart this place."

Azula blinked. Her brow furrowed. "You're…kicking me out?"

"Nonsense. You will always be allowed in. You know the way, after all. I simply am fulfilling my obligation to you as your educator: showing you the path that must be walked." He seemed truly sad to voice his next words. "That path leads you away from me, and into the Beyond."

* * *

White mist.

The jungle was as thick and full of life and activity as it had ever been. During her studies, Azula had read many stories of expeditions into the Spirit World by travelers of all kinds. From doctors in flying boxes, to children running away from their homes so that they could never grow up, even a small written account of Uncle Iroh's own journey, and his harrowing meeting with the Face Stealer.

None of the stories had ever described the Beyond.

It was easy to be mistaken as jungle fog. Azula had only to leave the sanctuary of the Library—her corporeal form vanishing as she did so, becoming ghostly and translucent once again—and drift through the woodland like a wraith for a few meters before noticing the fog getting thicker and thicker.

Wan Shi Tong's final words to her were, "If you manage to return, you will not be the same. I look forward to seeing how you grow. Simply come back to me, and you will have the knowledge that you have been looking for all this time."

She did not say anything back.

There wasn't any point.

So she drifted. Moving into and around and sometimes even through the jungle vegetation, silent and slow. The white mist kept condensing no matter which way she traveled, even when she retraced her path backwards.

_Well,_ she thought. _It looks like I'm pretty committed now._

The first clue that the white mist might not be a natural jungle construct came in the grinding-rock growl of a very deep, very inhuman voice.

**"**_**Greetings, my love. It is a pleasure to see you again."**_

She found herself pausing, blinking, and completely blind in the white-out of fog. She couldn't even see her own hand when she placed it two inches from her nose. There was only the white mist, weightlessness, and the voice.

Eventually, she registered what the voice had said.

"What do you mean, _again_?"

Like the shifting of a dream, reality warped around her—the white mist cleared, evaporated like morning fog caught in the gusts of a sudden wind; Azula found herself floating millimeters above an enormous steel saucer the size of an Agni Kai court, with gigantic stone walls on all four sides curving upwards into a domed ceiling. She had a flash of memory back to being trapped in the cave at the beginning of her journey—that cave had been small and a bit cramped, barely large enough for Wan Shi Tong to have fit inside.

This cave was easily a thousand times larger in every dimension. To her immediate left she felt, rather than saw, a calm pool of water undisturbed by so much as a ripple, yet the length and width of Lake Laowai. To her immediate right sat a dragon.

An actual dragon.

_Well, _she thought. _That explains the voice._

She'd heard all about dragons as a child. All children of the Fire Nation knew a thing or two, and nearly all of them had stories to tell about the famed beasts of myth. Dragons were supposed to value treasure above all else, lived to be thousands of eons old, could eat entire livestock farms in one night and have room left over for dessert. Some stories depicted them as shrewd, devious, and cunning incarnate. Other stories left listeners the impression that dragons were merely misunderstood intelligent beings who simply needed to be left alone.

Whatever had been taught about dragons, Azula presently knew and understood one thing. This dragon was huge. Words like _gargantuan, planetary, _and_ enormous _began to finally have true meaning. A veritable mountain of black scales, muscles, and talons, the creature lay on all fours within the impossibly big cave like a feline waiting for a mouse to come out of its hole. The dragon's eyes glowed with a red flame that cast a pale ruby glow on its black armor. Actual flames licked out from its eye sockets.

"_**Your life's path has brought you here several times already, my love. The only question left is: will you finally find the rest of the way?"**_

"The rest of _what_ way?" she asked, weakly. "I'm _still_ not done?"

"_**Dismay. This has always been your reaction upon your arrival." **_The dragon's eyes lowered in the same manner of a child upon receiving a boring birthday present. _**"I suppose some things never change.**_"

Azula's mind raced. She made sure that her voice betrayed no emotion when she asked. "I've been here before?"

"_**Yes. And no."**_

The answer was not lost on her, cryptic as it was. "Please tell me that you're not saying what I think you're saying."

"_**I say only what I can. I can answer any question you ask, just so long as the answer does not help you out of this place. I would hope that time spent with the owl has taught you thus."**_

She closed her eyes. "You're saying that…you're saying that I've been here before."

"_**Many times."**_

"But _I_, personally, have never been here."

"_**Correct."**_

"That can only mean that you've met me…in all of my previous lives."

"_**All?"**_ The dragon chuckled. It sounded like boulders falling down a rock cliff. _**"Don't be ridiculous. You reach this location two or three times out of every ten thousand lives. On average."**_

She rubbed her face. Ten thousand lives? Only two or three times?

On _average_?

An incalculable weight shifted itself onto her shoulders, and Azula slumped down. Her feet even touched the floor. She was so tired. Tired enough to die, if she could do it again.

She looked up into the great dragon's eyes. "You're a Great Spirit. One of the four beasts who hold the knowledge of everything. Including energybending. The Avatar wrote about you guys, and said that a Lion-Turtle taught him how to beat my father. Are you one of the Four?"

"_**I am."**_

She looked around her. A far cry from the jungle, this was. "What is this place?"

"_**This?" **_he broke eye contact long enough to glance in this direction and that. _**"This is a gateway, my love. The end of your journey, or simply its midpoint—the choice is yours."**_

Spirits and riddle-speak; Azula was heartily sick of both. "What's next? Where do I go from here?"

"_**I don't know."**_

This caused her to stare. "Excuse me?" A Great Spirit, admitting that he didn't know? Even though they were supposed to know everything?

"_**This is as far as you've ever come. I have never seen what you would call 'the next step'. Though, of course, it is possible that such a step exists. You have never before possessed the means necessary to take it."**_

"What are the means?"

The dragon grinned, and winked. _**"To tell you that would be helping you, wouldn't it?"**_

"And you can't give me an answer that would help me," she finished for him. So. There were answers here, just not the answers she needed. But they were something. "Maybe I shouldn't take the next step forward, because perhaps there really isn't one. That would mean I've reached a dead end. So…how do I turn back, get back to the Library?"

"_**There is no turning back. If you do not go forward, here you will stay."**_

"If I stay here, then I wouldn't be able to be reincarnated," she said, thinking out loud. "But according to Wan Shi Tong, I'm already dead. So…what happens to my spirit, my soul? What happens to _me_, usually, when I can't take the next step?"

"_**Your reactions usually vary. Often you politely ask me to destroy you."**_

She stared, unsure if he was joking.

"_**Other times,**_" he continued, clearly not, _**"you attack me with such ferocity and rage that I am forced to destroy you. Several hundred times you have spent, in measurements of what you call time, a few centuries in conversation with me. Many times we became lovers. Then you requested an end, and I sent your soul back to the world so that you could begin your journey anew."**_

"A dragon's bride," she muttered. "That's a new one. Hope you're not offended when I tell you this time that I just want to be friends."

"_**You know us dragons. We're all about our understanding and compassion." **_He gave her the wink again, and Azula decided to avoid his gaze for as much as possible for the remainder of her time there. Familial incest, done in secret, was one thing. Zoophilia was for another life. _Throw in some pedophilia on my part and I'll pretty much have all the kink bases covered._

"_**You should know that it isn't my task to be your enemy here, my love. I am not here to puzzle you like the owl, or to hold you back from completing your search. I am, as your kind say, 'on your side', even if only to avoid the unpleasantness of returning your soul to the world."**_

"Then how can you help me get out of here?" she asked. "What can you do to help me succeed?"

"_**Nothing. I cannot help you succeed. I will not. I can only talk with you, and hope that success finds you, and that you find it. To aid you, though? That is beyond my power here."**_

Azula sighed, and lowered her head. The tiredness would probably never leave her. At some point, she sat down, and after an unknown interval she realized that she had been staring past the dragon, silently thinking about nothing at all and taking a very long time to do it.

The sort of interval measured in days.

The dragon hadn't moved.

Eventually she asked, "How is it that you're even here?"

He blinked. _**"Is this a question of philosophy, or simple quantum physics?"**_

"No—I meant it just as simple. I look around this cave and I can't see an entrance. How did you get in here?"

"_**I did not 'get in here'. Your opposite built this cave around me, when he constructed the gateway to that which you seek."**_

"Built it around you?" she repeated, marveling at the act of Earthbending that must have required. "And you've been here all this time? That must really…well, to put it politely—suck."

The dragon smiled, and smoke hissed out from between gleaming white incisors. _**"Reality is not what we want, wish, or hope for, my love. It is not how things should be. It is the way things are."**_

"My father would like that little lesson," she muttered. "Still, though, it's got to be pretty boring."

"_**Boredom is not something that Great Spirits experience. I have only my task. It is enough that I exist in peace."**_

"Right. The task to be my friend, but also to never help me get what I want," she muttered again.

"_**What do you want?"**_ the dragon asked.

She stared at him.

She didn't answer.

Because she didn't really know.

Not really.

She hadn't even _thought_ about it. She wanted to learn energybending, yes. And she wanted to be with her father, get him out of prison and all that. And she wanted to teach Team Avatar a thing or two about pain and misery…

But what was the point? What was the overall purpose?

"I know what I want right now," she eventually said. "I'm looking for a way out of here. You're a hot date and all," she glanced up at the beast, whose eyes gleamed. "But above all I'm looking for the way out of here. Without that, nothing matters."

"_**Very good."**_ The dragon thumped his tail onto the cave floor in a mockery of applause. _**"And how exactly do you expect to find a way out, when every prior version of you has failed?"**_

"That? That's the easy part." She placed one hand on her hip, cocked her waist and tilted her head, a devious smile tugging at her lips. "I'll ask my former lover. You're going to tell me everything I want to know."

The dragon's eyes widened, then closed to red slits. The ancient Spirit lashed out with a taloned hand and seized her within its clenched fist. His voice thundered like an earthquake to topple mountains. _**"DO YOU HONESTLY THINK I CAN BE FOOLED AWAY FROM MY PURPOSE BY FEMININE WILES, YOU LITTLE SLUT? DO NOT MISTAKE ME FOR SOME IDIOTIC MARK FOR SEDUCTION—DO NOT EVER THINK YOU CAN PLAY THAT GAME."**_

"First off, I've only had one _real_ lover, and he's not here right now," she said, unflinching. "Second, you mentioned something about my 'opposite' building this cave around you so that you'd have a job to do. I'd be really surprised if that job is to warm the ground with your sagging old balls while you wait for me to keep you company—and I don't get surprised very often."

The Great Dragon Spirit glared down at her with literal fire in his eyes and a furnace of hellfire in his throat.

Having been educated by the painful lessons of Wang Shi Tong, however, had surgically removed any tendency for Azula to be cowed by a threatening look.

"I have two questions, and you _should_ be able to answer them," she continued. "First, what is your name, dragon?"

The stark threat of his glare might as well have been chiseled in ice. But slowly, glacially, as if watching a mountain of frozen seawater melt in the light of a tropical sun, Azula watched the great beast's features soften into relaxation, and his taloned grip went slack enough that she floated gently down to the ground.

"_**Your manners need improving,"**_ he grumbled. _**"It's not very often that you treat me with such disrespect."**_

"People," she said with a soft, almost regrettable, tone, "change."

"_**My name is debatable,"**_ he began. _**"Dragons, being mostly unable to talk, don't receive names at birth. The only designations I have ever been assigned have all been given to me by you. When you and I part ways, as we inevitably do, I allow my name to go with you, and die."**_

Azula smiled.

She'd make him wait some more, then.

"My second question is more of a request," she went on. "Describe your purpose. Please."

This time, the dragon gave a self-indulgent chuckle that reminded her of the rocks again. _**"Look there, my love," **_he gestured with his snout over to the rippling pool. _**"My purpose, like anyone's, is not so easily summed up in words. The pool will help you see. It will only show you one thing."**_

"Your purpose?" she guessed, drifting over to the rim of the pool. It was a perfect reflective surface, a shimmering mirror without solidity.

"_**Your desire**_,_**"**_ he corrected. And without gesture or flicker of expression, the mirror image of the pool transformed into paradise.

A world that worshipped Azula.

A land of nothing _but_ worshippers. Civilizations and cities devoted entirely to her. Beautiful statues the size of the tallest oaks, each depicting her naked, flawless, perfect, with thousands of people bowing down in eager submission. A world of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water peoples living together in harmony, united solely by their love for the Goddess she was.

A world where the title of Avatar was nothing more than a punchline.

A world where she sat on a throne built of pure magnificence, where those who had once hurt her were now forced to live forever in torment, or were dead. A world where Fire Lord Ozai came to her, wrapped his strong and loving arms around her, embraced her deeply, and placed her head to his chest. _"Thou art my one and only, daughter. In thee, I am well pleased."_

"Oh," she said.

It was all she could do, for a very long time.

This was what waited for her beyond here? She had never _dreamed_…It was all _right here_…In front of her, around her, she was already _there_…

She dove into the pool, and sunk into that world, and swam and swam and explored it all, every single inch of that world, until she had no breath, until her lungs burned, until exhaustion slammed into her and her skin caught fire and her body was dying and heaven was now hell and—

When she had finally regained her senses, the pool was once more at her feet, and the cave seemed dark and colder than ever.

The dragon was still there. He hadn't moved. Neither had she.

"_**If it had been that easy,"**_ he said, _**"Then you would never fail."**_

"Yes." She blinked, and turned away from the paradise pool. "Of course. I was…overcome."

"_**You always are."**_

"This is what waits for me? This is my future, if I can get out of here?

"_**Yes."**_

"All right," she said. She held her eyes closed, to fight off the temptation to look at the pool again. "So… this place, here and now, is designed specifically for me. To torment me, I assume. Distract me. To keep me one step away from more power than I could ever have imagined, one step from a world that I rule, and one step from my father. One step that I can't take, because I don't have the kind of power yet to achieve all three."

"_**Power,"**_ the dragon said gently, _**"only gets in your way."**_

"Whatever _that_ means," she said. "Your purpose, then, is to be like a jail guard. A friendly jail guard, one who constantly reminds the prisoner that there's a way out, but won't do anything to actually help."

"_**You could put it that way, yes."**_

"And you mentioned that my polar opposite is responsible for putting you here, and for building this entire thing." She looked the dragon straight in the eye. "This is going to sound like ego, but I can only think of one person—in any life—that has enough power and reason to do all this."

The dragon's grin turned sly. _**"You're quite attractive when you talk smart."**_

"And here I thought guys only liked airheads," she said. "So, really? The Avatar built this place, and I'm the opposite side of his coin?"

"_**Someone has to be,"**_ the dragon shrugged. _**"Millennia ago, the man possessed of the spirit you know as the Avatar knew that someday you—or one of your future incarnations—would eventually find the source to his power. Fantastic power. Unlimited power. He could not destroy that source, nor keep it for himself, nor hide it away from anyone who sought it out through knowledge and diligence, as he himself had. All he could do was provide a guard, and a very difficult door to walk through."**_ He made a gesture with both wings unfurled towards the cavernous ceiling, as if to say _Behold!_ _**"The result is this place, and this Spirit."**_

"Why you? Why not one of the others?"

"_**When you appoint a guardian for a one-person- prison**_," the dragon smiled, _**"you make sure that the guard is best suited for the prisoner."**_

"My perfect prisoner is a flirtatious dragon?"

"_**Would you rather be sharing this cave with a Lion Turtle right now?"**_

"I'd rather not." She closed her eyes again, thinking out loud. "So the Avatar built this place. And he was clever enough to make it simple, too." She opened her eyes and looked around again. "No windows, no conceivable exits. Stone harder than diamond, I'd assume, and even if I broke through, it probably wouldn't lead anywhere. This being the Spirit World and all. There's a guard who has no human weaknesses and possesses the patience of a rock, a pool that distracts me by showing me exactly what I want with no possible way to get it, the depressing knowledge that I've never gotten through this, and the only being that presumably knows how is unable to tell me anything that would help."

"_**There you go again, being all smart."**_

"Just wait until I'm powerful," she said. "Then you'll see something you'll like."

"_**Power only gets in your way,"**_he said again.

Again, she lost herself in thought.

Sometime later—days, weeks, it felt a lot longer than before—Azula looked back at the dragon and said, "This may be the perfect prison, but it was still made by the Avatar. I've studied every recorded incarnation of the Avatar Spirit, and each one had different personalities, but they all had one thing in common: they were Good."

"_**I would have thought,"**_he said**, "**_**that your time spent with the owl had cleansed you of any childish notions of Good or Evil."**_

"Oh, he did, make no mistake." The time spent at the monastery would not be easily forgotten, and the lessons had been paid in pain—they wouldn't be going anywhere. "Thething is, a person who believes themselves to be Good would never trap someone in an inescapable prison without the possibility of parole."

The dragon did not say anything.

Azula expected as much. "You're my prison guard. You've been instructed not to answer any question that would help me. But you've _mentioned_ a lot, and that's been helpful."

"_**I admit, I have missed your company."**_

"Since the Avatar is your boss—even if he doesn't remember it now—were you ever given any instructions by him that would help me?"

"_**That is a question, is it not?"**_

"Right." It would take a lot of practice to get used to this method of digging for answers. "Tell me what the Avatar told you to tell me."

The boulder-chuckle rang out again, and the dragon sighed. _**"It has been far too long since I've had a conversation as entertaining as this. Bravo, my love. I am permitted to give you only one 'hint,' so to speak, as to how you may pass on to your hopeful destination. It is in the form of a riddle."**_

This surprised her. "I thought riddles were the hallmark of Sphinxes."

"_**Silly child. Sphinxes don't exist."**_

Azula rolled her eyes. "All right. Tell me."

"_**The Avatar asks you this: Where do you find that which can't be found, and who can speak truth while they're lying? What is your freedom when locked underground, and how do you grow after dying?"**_

"How do I—?" She blinked at the dragon. "Is this some kind of joke? Something that the Avatar would use to make me chase my tail for a few millennia?"

"_**I am permitted to say that it is not. If it were, it would be able to tell you the answers because even knowing them would not help you escape here."**_

She tried a long shot. "Tell me the answers anyway." It was not a question, it was a request.

"_**Come now. Remember what I said about it not being easy?"**_

"Couldn't have hurt to try." She sat down, and thought again. "The first part, that's simple. You look for what can't be found inside a library, or any other place where they store knowledge, because the library can show you where to keep looking, can give you clues and so on. The second part…"

She crunched up her nose. "The only thing I've ever heard speak truths while lying is Wan Shi Tong."

The dragon simply looked at her, waiting.

She returned his look, feeling the onset of discovery forming in her brain, and when the realization came it hit her like a punch to the jaw. "Me…" she whispered. "This riddle…it's tailored for _me_, specifically for _me…_ He wasn't asking where _everyone_ finds what can't be found, or who speaks truths to everyone while lying..."

She went silent. This was the key to unlocking the rest of the riddle.

"He meant, where do _I?"_

The next line had been, What is your freedom when locked underground?

_Well, I'm pretty locked up down here,_ she thought. The perfect prison, in a cave. She could stay in here forever if she chose. Buried. Then she would be truly dead. _But death isn't my freedom_, she thought. _It's just a way to play the game again while hoping I don't wind up back in jail. True freedom would be making sure that I can't wind up back here._

What was her freedom? Locked underground, what tortured her whenever she thought about it? What did she long for more than life itself?

She turned and looked back at the reflection of paradise in the pool.

"Of course."

She could stay locked in here forever, forced to look at the one thing she most wanted and could never have. The freedom to do whatever she wanted, have whatever she wanted, be loved by whoever she wanted. Total power, total freedom. The perfect world. Built in her image.

_But…freedom is a metaphor, isn't it? It's not real, not something you can place in the palm of your hand. It's a mental construct, something that we imagine, to differentiate between ownership of property, permission to do things, and so on. It's like the sky—you think it's there, think it's real, but the reality of it is you can't grab it. You can't buy it or sell it. You can't own it, break it, change it, or restrict it—the same with freedom; you can do whatever you decide to do. Whether it's against the law, or against your master's wishes, that's another thing. But you can still do it._

She shook her head. She was getting off topic here.

_The answer to the third line is right there in the pool. It's the perfect world, where I'm the most powerful. Simple._

Not easy, but simple. The Library, Wan Shi Tong, and The Perfect World that was trapped with her inside the cave. Three answers, all chronological, all detailing her journey to this exact point. All that was left was the fourth line.

_How do you grow after dying?_

Her eyes drifted shut. It could have been for the final time. "Please. Tell me this is all some kind of sad joke. Please tell me that he's not serious."

"_**It is not. And he is."**_

"You mentioned that power gets in my way."

"_**Repeatedly."**_

"Because power is like freedom. Or like the sky. It's a metaphor, a label. Power is as much an idea in my head as it is in reality. The power to bend—to do any kind of bending, energy included—is both physical and mental."

"_**Yes."**_

"And power can't pass through this doorway."

"_**Correct."**_

"Even the hope for it. Even the hunger for it." She breathed in a shuddering breath, and spoke the message that the Avatar was trying to tell her. "As long as I want power—as long as energybending is _something _to me—I'm stuck here."

"_**True."**_

"And the only way I can get to where I most want to be…is to not care whether or not I ever make it."

"_**Yes."**_

"So." She opened her eyes, sighed, and stared back at the pool to gaze upon her dream of paradise. "I imagine this is usually when I ask you to kill me, and send me back to the world to be reincarnated."

"_**I am sorry, my love."**_

"At least now I understand why." She looked back at him, amazement and terror in her eyes. "I can't imagine a more perfect prison. This is my own private hell. How…how am I supposed to do this?"

"_**There is no such thing as a way you're 'supposed' to do something, besides doing it correctly. And none of your past lives have ever been able to do that. That is why this prison is perfect—succeed or fail, the essence of what you are will die right here."**_

"Great." She took a moment to organize everything within her head. "Let me see if I have this figured out correctly. I have spent this entire journey turning myself into a person who can get here, because I have been, consciously or not, trying to get _there_," she said, pointing with her thumb at the pool's image. "If I wasn't trying to get there, I would never have gotten here, with you. But in order to _actually_ get there, I have to become someone who never would have bothered to come here in the first place."

"_**Correct, my love." **_He settled down onto the floor of the cavern like an oversized cat trying to get comfortable._** "This next part is what we dragons call,"**_he said slowly, _**"the tricky part."**_

* * *

**Next: Final Chapter**


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's note: This is it, folks. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, because writing this stuff is more painful than you could possibly imagine. If you're interested in seeing the next part of the story, keep an eye out for the sequel, which is already in the works. You can find some more info about that on my profile page. Until then, thank you for sticking through all this with me. I hope I've done my job right.**

* * *

Time.

Long time.

Long, long, long time.

Time is a miraculous thing. It heals nearly every wound, and destroys every creation, simply through the rising and the setting of the sun. Even suns themselves are destroyed by time. Anything with mass, anything with energy, anything and everything that has so much as one atom within it can be demolished merely through the passage of time.

In this Spirit World, this can be a problem.

Atoms do not exist in the Spirit World. Time, quite frankly, doesn't even exist there—not in the linear, measurable way it does in other dimensions, at least. Things that exist in the Spirit World are constructs of an energy that has no classical definition, but the closest word to describe what gives everything their existence would be "memories".

Memories are the building blocks of a person, and that person's understanding of their surroundings. Each memory is a tiny grain of sand on an island beach.

A curious thing about beaches: how they are made. The amount of time necessary for some of the world's most beautiful oceanside locations to be made is a testament to the natural wonders of earth. Man can bring in sand from different locations to help speed up the process, but the natural building of a beach can only be done one way.

One grain at a time.

It takes time. A long, long time.

And each grain of sand has to be individually placed there by the earth herself. The world does not rush this natural construction, though. Tides come in and out, shorelines recede, and beaches are formed over the course of hundreds of years, sometimes over the course of millennia.

It was in this manner of construction that Azula slowly changed into what she needed to become.

* * *

She rose, gave her farewells to the dragon—along with an affectionate peck on the cheek, and instructions for her future self, should her reincarnation ever return—and said, "Perhaps next time I'll be a more amorous guest."

"_The more amorous of your carnations usually take the form of men."_

The girl she had once been would have probably found something offensive to the thought. The person she had become only nodded and drifted towards the pool.

For an infinite span, she floated above the image in the water. It was different, now. Instead of the image of a world full of worshippers, she only saw empty hallways in a Library, and an enormous owl wandering through them. There was an odd feeling of satisfaction that flitted through her when she noticed that the shelves were empty.

She didn't want to go to the Library for the knowledge.

She only wanted to see her friend.

How long had it been since she'd wanted something that simple? It had taken her quite a while. The long, long years of study and searching, of training and meditation, all those days were now focused, and refined, and resolved into this one single moment. The sole purpose of her vastly spanning journey had taught her that vengeance was futile, and that the only grave to be filled would belong to her old self. Her new self could meet the world and bring her own firelight to combat the darkness.

She lowered herself into the pool, feet first.

The surface was warm, and it slid over her waist and shoulders and face.

With gratitude, with reverence for her new life, and without fear of the future, Azula passed into the next stage.

* * *

Her first clue that things were a little bit different came when she found herself looking down at a corpse.

Battered, naked, bleeding from scores of wounds, buried under broken stone and oak beams, it took her all of a full second to realize that this was her body, and it was still inside the monastery that she had trained in. The last place where she had let herself lose control, and killed everyone. Including herself.

Even Wan Shi Tong was still there. His massive body lay crumpled against the far wall. Smoke tendrils curled upwards from his scorched body—the same smoke that curled from the charred flesh of Azula's dead palms—yet the gray ribbons did not dance in the air the way they were supposed to. The smoke, and even the dust motes hanging in the air, all hung frozen in place.

"Time," she heard from behind her, "is a very complex thing to understand."

She turned, and found the ghost of her old teacher there. Waiting for her arrival.

"Welcome back," he said simply. There were undercurrent notes of pride in those two words.

She offered a small, tired smile. "It's good to see you again. How long do you think I was gone?"

He offered a rustling shrug of feathers. "That depends. I, myself, perceived your absence as a remarkably short one. My Library lies only a few dozen leagues from here, and once you set off into the mist I immediately made my way here." His eyes read hers, and turned sad. "I imagine your own journey was perceived to be much more, ah…distant?"

The old Azula would have responded with a glib retort, something sarcastic or witty, making her audience the target of a well-timed quip. Instead, she only nodded, and turned back to look at her fallen body. "A ghost haunts where she rests, is that it?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.

He, surprisingly, offered one. "A ghost does what ghosts do. The real question is, what are you doing?"

"I am talking with a friend." She stopped, blinked, and thought for two seconds before nodding to herself. "Yes. A friend. What are you doing, then? I don't think that you just decided to come back here on a whim, and coincidence brought us both to the same location at the same time?"

"A great many things brought us here, my student. But as for my reason for being here, it is quite simple. I have a promise to keep to you."

She looked back at him, brow furrowed, until the old memory came back to her. "Energybending."

"You came back from Beyond. You'll remember that I _did_ promise you the secret, should you return."

She sighed, and gave her head the slightest of shakes. "There's no need to keep such a promise, my teacher."

Wan Shi Tong said nothing.

"You made that promise to a different person. A different ghost."

"You would reject this gift?" he asked, genuinely curious. "You, who have suffered and crawled over fire this whole way, would simply let the offered prize slip past you? And do it _knowingly_?"

"It's enough that I finished the race," she said. "I crossed the finish line. The trophy is just a perk."

"And what, pray tell, will you do now?"

She smiled. "A ghost does what ghosts do."

"And I do as I promise, my apprentice." His head lowered, and he seemed regretful. "But a gift like that cannot be forced into your hands. What must I do to keep my promise?"

For the longest time, Azula said nothing. Then, she said, "I would like to see my father again. One last time."

"That is something within my power," he said. "Accept the gift. Learn the final lesson that I have to give. And you will be able to see him."

"Thank you." She looked back at the two corpses, and then drifted over to the Knowledge Spirit. "But…not quite yet. Give us some more time, you and I. Honestly, I have missed your company."

"And I yours. To wait will be no hardship."

Together they sat, a pair of ghosts observing the shells they had once inhabited.

The time passed, the conversations were born and died, and thoughts were shared with no real desire to gain anything from them.

Azula had a lot of time to think.

She thought a lot about the girl she had once been. She could barely remember the pompous, arrogant, slightly silly creature. How had she gone from there to here? Was time all that she'd really needed? It didn't make sense.

She thought about being a student. About being a teacher.

Being a tyrant.

Being a child.

Being a caterfly.

Eventually, she brought it up to Wan Shi Tong. "Can you tell me, now, what you've been trying to do all this time? What you've been trying to get me to become?"

"Of course," he said easily. "I've been trying to get you to be exactly who you are."

"That's not very descriptive."

"Indeed. Yet there is no other way to put it. It is the only answer there is."

"But what _am_ I—? Wait, don't tell me: 'That's been the question all along, hasn't it?' If you only knew how annoying you can be sometimes."

"Forgive my curiosity," he said, with a tone suggesting the subject be changed, "but I confess to being ignorant. What do you think was the majoring factor in your escape from the dragon's cave? The thing that you changed most within yourself?"

Azula gave him a sideways look. "What, within me, would need to be changed most?"

A small laugh. "We know each other too well, you and I." His crest feathers flared. "But very well; there were only three possible ways for you to have left that cave. You would have to have killed yourself, or made the dragon do it for you. The third—that you would sacrifice who you were for who you would have to become—I would not think likely."

"But you thought it was possible."

"Of course. Highly improbable, yes, but never impossible. I simply wonder how the miracle of a human being moving away from personal vendetta—without outside help, relying only on herself, her own mind, her own heart—I wish I knew the motivation. It had to come from within, a place that so many of your kind fill with nothing but more emptiness."

"I chose a second option of revenge," she said. "I…seduced myself."

Wan Shi Tong's eyes gleamed with curiosity. "Truly?"

"I'll use energybending to teach the Avatar, my brother, and all of his friends a _real_ lesson. Kind of like the ones you've been teaching me." She smiled, the memories fresh and old at the same time. "I'm going to become a better savior than the Avatar. I'm going to _live well_." Her smile became a hard smile, a cold smile, like ice within her eyes. "I've heard that it's the best revenge."

The knowledge spirit tilted his head quizzically. "And this will teach your enemies…what?"

"That being my enemy is bad for everyone, and helps no one. If I do nothing but good things from now on, then even the mighty Avatar is going to have to _compromise _with me. Understand?"

"I do." There was a tone of appreciation in his voice. "You're going to teach them that Good and Evil aren't always black and white. That choosing to have an enemy is self-defeating, no matter who the enemy is."

"Yes." She looked down again at the naked corpse, buried under dust and rubble. "I know a few Firebenders who could stand to learn that lesson, also."

Wan Shi Tong reached out a giant wing, and the ghostly appendage drew around Azula's shoulders in a surprisingly warm variant of a hug. When she looked back to him, she was surprised to find the knowledge spirit's eyes glistening.

"My student," he said softly, "This is the pinnacle moment of any master's life: when the apprentice surpasses them. I am so incredibly _proud_ of you."

Azula found herself blinking back her own tears. "So is that all you really are? Just my teacher?"

"And your student. The two are synonymous."

She lowered her head, placing one hand on his feathered crest. Her heart ached with a hard, granite solidity that found its way into her voice. "They were such hard lessons. So many of them."

"It is a hard world," he said. "All of them. Hard worlds. And as I told you at the beginning, no lesson is truly learned until it has been bought with the currency of pain."

"You've been right about that so far," she sighed, her eyes never leaving her corpse. "But there has to be a better way."

"Perhaps there is," he said. Wan Shi Tong raised one enormous talon to her forehead. "Perhaps that is what _you_ will get to teach all of us."

The talon's point connected with the ghostly skin of her forehead, and the final lesson began.

* * *

_Everything…_

That is exactly what she saw. Everything.

As if she were suspended above an enormous map of the entire world, and she could see right down to the smallest atom.

She saw the mountainous cliff ridges of all four Air Temples, the jungle-swamps and fever woodlands of the Earth Kingdom, and every single ship of the Fire Nation naval fleet rocking on the waves of the world's vast ocean. She witnessed sandbenders fending off an attacking swarm of vulture-wasps, the skies above them crackling with a desert lightning storm. She saw a hundred Water Tribe priests in the North Pole, chanting as they diverted an oncoming tsunami from crashing into their iceberg barrier walls. She saw her Uncle kneeling before a makeshift shrine beneath a tree outside the impenetrable wall of Ba Sing Se, the Avatar meditating in his chambers at the Southern Air Temple, Ty Lee crying on Kyoshi Island, Mai in the palace…

…and she saw her brother standing in front of a newly filled grave, his eyes hard, his head lowered.

She did not see her father. Anywhere.

She reached out to the grown man that was her brother, and discovered that her form had changed yet again. This was no hand of flesh and bone, or translucent ghostly energy. This hand was some kind of shifting collection of tiny human beings. Thousands of them, millions, each the size of fleas, all of them naked and raw, birthing and dying, eating, drinking, fucking, fighting each other.

The world's population had become her body.

Her father was not part of it.

She was a hive of humanity, but something more: she was a structural framework that organized and shaped and gave purpose to the millions of tiny lives that fed her their devotion, their love. A dizzying shift of perspective brought her an inch closer to the truth: these people were actually _life-sized_. She herself was an unimaginable titaness, built of a hundred million people, billions of them, so many more—

Benders and non-benders. Pacifists and warriors. Monsters and democratic-appointed saviors. All of them aching with hunger, lust, loneliness, pain. Crying for the love of their mother, because father was letting them hurt. And she knew them all, really _knew_ them, the way a mother knows her children as she holds them to her breast.

She looked down to the map of the world again, and saw it emptied of humanity.

_Father…where are you?_

The people were part of her, now. All of them. The entire world. She felt the energy of their relationships to one another, tasted the bitterness of their sorrow and the elation of their joy, the nervousness of new lovers touching, the sadness of old friends parting ways, the angry grief of a son digging a shallow grave by hand.

* * *

The slow drizzle was just strong enough to keep the flies from buzzing around Zuko as he packed the last of the dirt onto the old man's corpse.

It was a tired, swampy kind of shower, like spit from the clouds, and it was the only moisture that fell onto the white mourning tunic that Fire Lord Zuko wore. He stood alone. Silent. He'd been that way for hours. As many hours as it took to dig the grave.

The man that was once Ozai did not receive the funeral of a royal. Nor was his body subjected to the indignities of a prisoner's corpse removal—ground up into chum and sold to fishermen. His body wasn't paraded through the streets to be disfigured by the people he'd once ruled. It did not receive the funeral pyre that the Fire Nation reserved for its honored citizens.

The body of Ozai was buried into the earth, without a coffin, dressed only in the clothes he'd died in, and the grave was dug by his own son.

This, as a custom, was not practiced in the Fire Nation. It belonged more to the Earth Kingdom than anything; Zuko had seen it done during his time in exile. For a firebender to be buried at all, it would most likely have to be due to the need of secrecy, or shame, or simple desperate _need_ that is brought through a hermit's poverty.

These were the emotions that ran through the blood of the Fire Nation's current lord. The world could never know the true fate of Ozai—history scrolls already had taken care of that. Five years ago it was written that Ozai had died in prison. It was a good enough half-truth that Zuko didn't feel entirely like a liar _all_ the time. What he did feel like was a bandit. Like a teenage exile on the run, pretending to be royalty when all he really was…

_What the hell AM I, now?_

He tried to summon Ozai's face when he'd returned from exile with his sister, under the lie that he'd killed the Avatar. He tried to hold _some_ good memory of him, tried at least to feel some real respect and loss for the man that had given him life, but he couldn't. Standing in the rain, head bent, hating himself and his father, all he could really think about was the fact that there was still one loose thread.

The mystery of Azula's whereabouts.

Could he really be that shallow, after all? Mind wandering to unfinished business, even at his own father's funeral?

His good eye—dry, unblinking—stared down at the mound of earth that hid the corpse.

His other eye seemed to blaze at the mound with black rage, as though he believed the dirt was responsible for producing such a monster and was now being forced to swallow it whole. Ozai had been his father. He was supposed to have led his son, loved him, raised him. Not thrown him aside in favor of a daughter. That's what fathers were supposed to do, dammit.

From behind, he heard the soft, timid steps of his wife. She walked hesitantly through the mud, but Zuko knew it wasn't from fear of getting her shoes dirty.

He sighed, and lifted his eyes from the mound. He turned, and saw the regal, lithe woman that he was lucky enough to call his wife, her face etched with worry, her lips trembling with the uncertain effort of trying to find the right words to say.

But there were no words.

There really was nothing that could be said, when the truth of the situation was bigger than the words that could describe it. His wife was here. His father was gone—banished from the world by his _son's_ hand, this time—but his wife was still _here_. His friends were still here. That was what mattered, now.

"I've been thinking about names," he said. His voice was even, and clear.

Mai walked the final steps and put her arms around his waist in a soft hug. Her lips brushed his. Zuko was amazed that this woman who was often viewed as cold, hard, and downright frosty by others, was to him so soft and warm.

"And?" she asked.

He placed one hand on her belly. Already he could feel the tiny swell, even through her robes. "If it's a girl, Zora. But I'm having a difficult time coming up with one for a boy."

"Let's talk about it inside."

Zuko felt himself being guided back to the palace, away from the burial mound. Following was easy, for a change. He was grateful that someone was there to help him put it behind him. Otherwise he might never have been able to leave.

* * *

She had a brief impression of dizziness, the way she once had as a child rolling cartwheels down a hill, before pure raw agony flooded into her like lightning into a towering pine. Broken bones screamed from the inside of her shattered nose and ribcage and both legs. Her head exploded from the torture of cracked skull. Her body was being crushed by the tons of rubble that had fallen onto it, sandwiching her between boulders on top and jagged pebbles beneath.

It.

Was.

Amazing_._

She reveled in the wild, pure sensation that forced her eyes open wide and her mouth in a soundless scream. Suddenly she was awake, alive.

She opened her eyes and saw, really and truly observed, how the world was. The stones of the monastery that she'd brought down upon her head were the most beautiful things in the world, and she could _see_ how they existed, how atoms formed into dust, then dust to sand, and sand to stone, the same way she'd once been able to see how walls of flame could be brought to life from just a spark. She could _hear_ the stone as much as see it, hear the vibration of its molecules and atoms, listened to the way the swirling electrons produced their own music.

She had a brief realization that this was what stone appeared like to an earthbender.

_It's so easy this way…_

The earth, the sand, the dust, the stones and rocks and wood that made up the monastery, they were all like songs in an endless opera, objects made out of melody and pitch as much as brick and mortar. She _knew_ them without thought, without effort.

She barely needed to breathe, the rising of her stomach providing the necessary dance that removed all the earth from her ruined body. Lungs inflated, pushing oxygen into blood, and the most painful muscle movement she'd ever felt in her life announced itself.

Her heart shuddered with its first beat.

Suddenly she could feel her wounds again. The blood was pouring out of the punctures and cuts and rips and tears in her body like water leaking from a cracked vase. She was alive, her body was _alive_. But she was dying all the same, and wouldn't last very long.

She was definitely going to have to do something about that.

She tuned her ears inward for the music of herself, searching, digging for the atomic hum that made blood and bone and flesh into nothing more than chords on a musical scale. She heard it, and was amazed—her body was definitely made up of different stuff than the elements, at once simple and indescribably complex, stronger than iron, softer than water…

The second beat arrived.

_The human body is fascinating. Mine certainly isn't what I would have guessed. But never mind—the real question is how can I change it, fix it? And can I do it in time? Let's try…THIS—_

And the pain of cracked nose disappeared, followed immediately by healed ribs and cranium.

_And now some of this…_

The black skin on her palms melted away like flecks of ash, and healthy pink skin grew in replacement. The tears and gashes that coated her body all closed, reknitting themselves into skin that was seamless with its lack of scars.

_But most importantly…_

And, as the third beat of her heart arrived, she found the harmonics of what little blood remained inside of her body, and pushed every cell back into circulation. She breathed in deep, drinking in the still air, and once inside her body she twisted the oxygen molecules into new blood, fresh blood, clean fuel for her heart's fire.

_And now for the final touches…_

Her internal organs resumed their normal states of health, their battle wounds closing from inside out.

Azula's new palms placed themselves down onto the stone floor, and she pushed herself up into a crouch, standing slowly, awkwardly, a newborn foal walking for the first time. There was no mother to help her stand, no father for her to lean on.

_Father_.

The vision that had filled her mind was still fresh, and Azula was still analytical enough to know that she had detected no trace of him. No trace of his energy.

She stood perfectly still.

She opened herself up to the music of her spirit, and listened closely. She could feel Wan Shi Tong, the ghost of his connection to her. The connection that was born of the energy of their friendship. Though his own massive corpse lay freshly slumped against the far wall, Azula knew that his spirit was still alive, and it existed inside of her.

She could, oddly enough, feel a much smaller, softer melody within her soul. One that belonged unmistakably to her brother.

Apparently, there was still a bond between them. One born of hatred?

No.

The analytical part of her mind supplied a possible answer: brother and sister shared a connection not only by blood and history, but perhaps through pure sibling relationship. Interesting. She would have to see how that would work to her advantage in the future, because…

Her mind wouldn't let her finish the thought.

_How long will you stand here, then, looking at these walls? How long before you face up to the only possible answer?_

That thought…it had come unbidden. And it had the slightest flavor of the Knowledge Spirit's infuriating riddle-speak.

_As long as it fucking takes,_ she thought. Her ghost-self had done away with such poor language. But she was far from a ghost anymore.

She had found her way to the Library. She had escaped the Avatar's trap. She knew a thing or two about patience.

_What are you waiting for, then?_

And she found that she didn't have an answer. Not a satisfactory one, anyway. Because the only _real_ answer was that she was waiting to come up with a reason why her father couldn't be…

Couldn't be…

She stopped pretending when she could no longer see clearly through the sting of tears flowing down her cheeks. She wept like a child, rocking back and forth on the floor, hugging her knees to her naked chest. She squeezed her body, aching to be touched by someone else, anyone else, but all she had were her wrecking sobs. Fresh tears joined the dried blood that coated her skin and the monastery floor. Dried blood that had been given to her by her father.

When she gained control again, she dried her eyes, but kept them closed. She tried again. She remembered everything she could about her father, searching for a defining theme out in the world, a melody that spoke of _him_, a harmony that echoed the way he had touched her, a chordal structure that was the way he'd pushed into her.

And found it was hopeless.

Apparently, energybending was only good to be used on the living.

_Which makes it no good at all. Unless I can find someone alive to use it on._

And she had a few good ideas as to plausible suspects.

Avatar Aang. Fire Lord Zuko. The Waterbender girl, and her brother, and the Blind Bandit, and the Kyoshi Warrior.

The whole gang. One of them had to be responsible. And what she had done in the past, what Azula had once been as a child, would seem kind and loving in comparison to the hell she would make them go through. She wanted to torture them all, make them bleed. See their heads rolling on the ground. Feel their necks snap in her hands.

She had to suppress a darkly ironic laugh. The Avatar had intended on his trap making her into a peaceful noncombatant? Instead, he'd helped her grow from a forest fire into a volcanic eruption. He would pay for that error. And if _he_ was the one responsible for taking her father away from her, the punishment would be neverending. She intended to wreck his body, destroy his soul, dismantle his mind piece by piece. Tear him down to nothing, build him back to health, and then do it all over again. And when she was done, when there was nothing left of him but emptiness, she would make him go through it all over again…

But suddenly she stopped, remembering her own history.

This was exactly what the old Azula would have done. Let her fantasies blind her to the realities of life.

_You don't need to be too hasty._

She had spent her entire existence following orders, getting guidance from elsewhere. Now it was time for the ultimate authority to come from herself. It was time to think, time to plan, take charge, make her enemies dance to her tune, instead of the other way around. To do this, however, she would need to change some fundamental things about herself. She couldn't shoot before aiming.

What she decided to do first was focus on the energy of herself again.

She changed a few aspects of her appearance first, all superficial things, improvising so that she could get a feel as to how the process worked. She changed her hair from jet black to snow white, and made it cascade down to her waist. Sick of being starvation-skinny, she added a few pounds of curvaceous muscle onto her frame, distributing them evenly, making her arms sleek and athletic, her legs smooth and long, her breasts firm and supple. Then she gave herself jet-black irises, to conceal her former gold.

_But I need to go deeper than just my appearance. I'm dealing with the Avatar of the Earth, and all of his forces. I need to show them something they've never seen before._

She examined the song that her energy hummed, and made the song loop over onto itself. Instant immortality, making the process of aging into nothing more than a memory.

_Unbelievably simple_.

She altered the physical appearance of her body, de-aging it, shrinking in size and frame until she was a prepubescent girl again, then growing up into a fully matured woman. She settled on the balance of twenty summers, thought about it, and then made her face even younger, back to its age of fifteen.

Her human frailty was next.

Her skin became perfect armor: the top two layers soft as a newborn's, while the next layers became leather, and then organic stone. Bones became steel. Teeth became sharpened pearls. Blood became magma.

_What about the physical weaknesses?_

It was a simple matter to eliminate them, removing a note here and there from the energy's hum. There was now no longer any need for food or water, no bodily cravings for sex, no intimate desire for love and acceptance from others.

_And forgiveness? Will I ever be able to forgive what they've done?_

She didn't think so. But one could never be sure when it came to the future, so she remorselessly hacked away at her moral code. Forgiveness was instantly removed. Guilt, pity, shame—all gone. Anything that might weaken her she tore out, leaving nothing but the burning desire to revenge herself on Zuko and his ilk for what they had done.

There was one thing that she would leave intact, though.

Love, it seemed, had its use in creating bonds between herself and others. And she could sense added power flowing through what few bonds she still had.

The flavor of that power, and the myriad possibilities that it promised, calmed her and crept a smile onto her face.

She took one last look at the wreckage of the monastery around her, and the already decaying husk of her former teacher, before facing east. She raised her palms upward and a gust of air caught her, cradled her, carried her up through the gaping hole that was once the roof and into the sky.

Fire Princess Azula knew how to bend air to her will.

The purge of her emotions had failed to remove one: satisfaction. She figured it could be allowed to stay.

For now, she floated east. She would be leaving the Spirit World behind, presumably never to return. It was too wide and unpredictable, and she knew how things worked best back home. A portal between worlds was close by; she could feel its resonance in the air. Beyond the portal was the Fire Nation. _Her_ nation, soon.

Her world.

It was a big world. A very big garden.

And it was filled with weeds that needed to be pulled.

* * *

**A new era is dawning on the world of mankind. The sun is setting on the ways of the old, and darkness approaches from the horizon. There are some who will keep their personal fires burning bright, in hopes that it will keep the darkness at bay. **

**Inside the grand palace of a nation's capital, a father holds one hand to his wife's stomach, feeling the tiny kicks that cause his heart to speed up and a rare smile to break across his face.**

**In a land of ice and water, a mother holds the hand of a wide-eyed little girl as she is introduced to the culture that makes up part of her proud heritage. The little girl knows nothing of the horrors that tomorrow might bring, but there is no need for her to know. The mother is ready and prepared for them.**

**In the home of an eccentric old inventor, a young man in a wheelchair reads an urgent message from old friends asking for help. He places the message down, wheels himself into his father's workshop, and immediately begins sketching a new design.**

**There is hope.**

**There is also despair.**

**An acrobat who cannot move lies helplessly on a cot, grieving for the life she has lost. Her heart and soul are cremated ash, locked inside a living body that she cannot escape.**

**A master of the air element who is the last of his people looks over the scores of students he has trained for years, with not one of them producing the slightest hope of continuing his race.**

**And a newly born goddess burns in the flame of her bitter, angry soul. **

**As it has been said, this is a story that has already happened. Nothing can change it.**

**Though the goddess has sacrificed everything that once made her human, her story is not over. The tragedy is not yet complete. There is very little in this world that ever truly comes to a complete and final end.**

**But as the goddess breaks through a barrier in reality and steps forth into the land that she once knew, there is certainty within her that one story has definitely come to pass. Another story shall begin soon, very soon, but for now there is the grim, solid certainty that her worst nightmares have become reality, and there is no longer anything left to fear. Not in this world. Not anymore. **

**Those fears have ended. Those days are over.**

**The goddess is powerful, and she is intelligent. To her allies she will be a blessing. To her enemies, she will be cruel. Her cruelty will be total, and complete, and perhaps even educational; to teach others that to be her enemy is to invite an education crueler still. **

**Because this goddess knows a thing or two about cruelty.**

**This goddess understands cruelty. She has lived with it for a long, long time.**

**She is, after all, the lone graduate of the cruel tutelage of Wan Shi Tong.**


End file.
